The U.S.S. Prius
When gas hit $4 a gallon, I was happy. Nothing motives changing behavior like getting hit in the wallet, and SUV sales slumped for the first time since we were convinced they were the vehicles we needed to be driving. Well, it appears this maxim is also true of our military...
Dedicated to exploring issues of sustainable development, saving the world one blog post at a time.
Sunday, December 19, 2010
Friday, May 28, 2010
Sustainability and The Bike Industry
This week, I've been contemplating a deep and disturbing question: is the bike industry as we know it sustainable? What is important to note is that the bike industry is similar in so many ways to all of our other industries. So I ask the question of the bike industry, because that is what I know best, and because that is the industry in which I find myself, but it could and should be asked of all our industries.
We had a meeting with our strategic planning team this week. It was encouraging; the business is doing well. We talked about growth, profit, and partnerships. What wasn't discussed were limits to growth. I doubt anyone in the room would've argued that unlimited growth is sustainable, but limits to growth seem to be the elephant in the room in any discussion of business strategy. The following is purely speculation, but it seems logical to assume that to talk about limits would stifle growth. To recognize openly that, if we want to be serious about sustainable business, we need to limit our growth would be to limit ourselves, rather than being held back by an external limiting factor.
I see in this the tragedy of the commons. If we limit ourselves, that means we'll be leaving resources on the table for others to use. In other words, if we don't use those resources, somebody else will, and then we've sacrificed our competitive edge.
At this point, I'm not comfortable enough at work to actually ask these questions. I don't even know how my asking would be perceived; I don't want others to think I'm questioning the foundation upon which 500 employees depend. But I hope to ask someday.
We had a meeting with our strategic planning team this week. It was encouraging; the business is doing well. We talked about growth, profit, and partnerships. What wasn't discussed were limits to growth. I doubt anyone in the room would've argued that unlimited growth is sustainable, but limits to growth seem to be the elephant in the room in any discussion of business strategy. The following is purely speculation, but it seems logical to assume that to talk about limits would stifle growth. To recognize openly that, if we want to be serious about sustainable business, we need to limit our growth would be to limit ourselves, rather than being held back by an external limiting factor.
I see in this the tragedy of the commons. If we limit ourselves, that means we'll be leaving resources on the table for others to use. In other words, if we don't use those resources, somebody else will, and then we've sacrificed our competitive edge.
At this point, I'm not comfortable enough at work to actually ask these questions. I don't even know how my asking would be perceived; I don't want others to think I'm questioning the foundation upon which 500 employees depend. But I hope to ask someday.
Tuesday, May 18, 2010
The Hannover Principle
Source: The Hannover Principles Design for Sustainability
By: William McDonough & Partners, 2000
Reflection:
It is my final week of training at the new job. This morning, we had a module called Commitment to Action, the gist of which is that intentions, ultimately, are worth nothing. It is action that actually “makes the world a better place.” This is something that resonates with me on a deep, fundamental level. I spent the first part of my life wandering through the world, recognizing problems and hoping for solutions. Ugh, that trash in the sidewalk is ugly. Somebody should really pick that up and put it in the garbage can. Hmmm, Cathy has something stuck in her teeth. Somebody should really let her know. Wow, I really like those shoes. I hope somebody says something to her. Thoughts like these are evidence that my heart was in the right place, but thoughts like these didn’t clean the sidewalks, or prevent Cathy from having an embarrassing afternoon, or boost the confidence of the woman with the nice shoes, and isn’t that the purpose of those thoughts? On my right bicep is a tattoo. It is a delta, which is, as the physics geeks out there know, the symbol for change. It is my always and constant reminder to live those immortal words of Ghandi, which I consider to be the most powerful ever uttered, “Be the change you wish to see in the world.” Pick up the trash, tell Cathy to get some floss, and compliment the woman with the shoes. If somebody should do it, be that somebody. This is not an easy standard, and I fall short more often than not, but if I can live up to those words even a tiny fraction of the time, I have made a greater difference than all the good thoughts I have ever had or ever will have, combined.
The Hannover Principle is a heavy, philosophical, and inspirational document. It envisions a world in which our culture of unsustainable consumption has been transformed into something we can live with for the foreseeable future. It does not ask the question, “Is this possible?” It just says, “This is how it has to be.” (Although I doubt McDonough would argue this is the only way things could be in our quest for sustainability) I don’t disagree. The Way Things Are is not sustainable, and unless that changes, our unsustainable culture and the creatures who propagate it will cease to exist, rendering the former question moot.
My thoughts when reading The Hannover Principles, and I purposefully avoided using the term criticism, for reasons I’ll discuss later, is that it represents good intentions. There are a lot of goals and guidelines about how the expo should be carried out. This is the first I had heard of the Hannover Expo, so I don’t know if these intentions were acted on, or with what success the goals were met, although I am certain, given the time and motivation, I could have found out. Even if the expo adhered strictly to the guidelines, and all the goals were met with great success, so what? It’s an expo. It is, literally, a microcosm, and these issues are of the macro level or greater. The ultimate question is, what do we do with these good intentions?
Forgive me if that’s an obvious question, but it seems important enough to risk being trite. Again, this is not criticism; it is simply recognition that we have identified a good starting point, intentions, and must move on to the next phase, action. Current cities and the way in which they’re planned (or not, as it turns out) are not sustainable. We need to change that, so let’s have an expo that explores ideas of sustainable cities. And then what?
Clearly, the intentions aren’t going to save the world, and one person acting on good intentions isn’t going to save the world, and a whole city of people acting on good intentions are not going to save the world, and it may not even be possible for an entire country, acting on good intentions, to save the world (although it would depend on the country I suppose). So the first action must be the dissemination of information. I think we get this, though the manner in which it’s communicated often leaves much to be desired. Then, because one person, acting alone, cannot save the world, we need to empower others to make changes when appropriate and possible. While the details of this are complex and daunting, on a theoretical level it's simple: education. Make people aware they have the power to change, and give them the tools to do so. Easier said than done...
By: William McDonough & Partners, 2000
Reflection:
It is my final week of training at the new job. This morning, we had a module called Commitment to Action, the gist of which is that intentions, ultimately, are worth nothing. It is action that actually “makes the world a better place.” This is something that resonates with me on a deep, fundamental level. I spent the first part of my life wandering through the world, recognizing problems and hoping for solutions. Ugh, that trash in the sidewalk is ugly. Somebody should really pick that up and put it in the garbage can. Hmmm, Cathy has something stuck in her teeth. Somebody should really let her know. Wow, I really like those shoes. I hope somebody says something to her. Thoughts like these are evidence that my heart was in the right place, but thoughts like these didn’t clean the sidewalks, or prevent Cathy from having an embarrassing afternoon, or boost the confidence of the woman with the nice shoes, and isn’t that the purpose of those thoughts? On my right bicep is a tattoo. It is a delta, which is, as the physics geeks out there know, the symbol for change. It is my always and constant reminder to live those immortal words of Ghandi, which I consider to be the most powerful ever uttered, “Be the change you wish to see in the world.” Pick up the trash, tell Cathy to get some floss, and compliment the woman with the shoes. If somebody should do it, be that somebody. This is not an easy standard, and I fall short more often than not, but if I can live up to those words even a tiny fraction of the time, I have made a greater difference than all the good thoughts I have ever had or ever will have, combined.
The Hannover Principle is a heavy, philosophical, and inspirational document. It envisions a world in which our culture of unsustainable consumption has been transformed into something we can live with for the foreseeable future. It does not ask the question, “Is this possible?” It just says, “This is how it has to be.” (Although I doubt McDonough would argue this is the only way things could be in our quest for sustainability) I don’t disagree. The Way Things Are is not sustainable, and unless that changes, our unsustainable culture and the creatures who propagate it will cease to exist, rendering the former question moot.
My thoughts when reading The Hannover Principles, and I purposefully avoided using the term criticism, for reasons I’ll discuss later, is that it represents good intentions. There are a lot of goals and guidelines about how the expo should be carried out. This is the first I had heard of the Hannover Expo, so I don’t know if these intentions were acted on, or with what success the goals were met, although I am certain, given the time and motivation, I could have found out. Even if the expo adhered strictly to the guidelines, and all the goals were met with great success, so what? It’s an expo. It is, literally, a microcosm, and these issues are of the macro level or greater. The ultimate question is, what do we do with these good intentions?
Forgive me if that’s an obvious question, but it seems important enough to risk being trite. Again, this is not criticism; it is simply recognition that we have identified a good starting point, intentions, and must move on to the next phase, action. Current cities and the way in which they’re planned (or not, as it turns out) are not sustainable. We need to change that, so let’s have an expo that explores ideas of sustainable cities. And then what?
Clearly, the intentions aren’t going to save the world, and one person acting on good intentions isn’t going to save the world, and a whole city of people acting on good intentions are not going to save the world, and it may not even be possible for an entire country, acting on good intentions, to save the world (although it would depend on the country I suppose). So the first action must be the dissemination of information. I think we get this, though the manner in which it’s communicated often leaves much to be desired. Then, because one person, acting alone, cannot save the world, we need to empower others to make changes when appropriate and possible. While the details of this are complex and daunting, on a theoretical level it's simple: education. Make people aware they have the power to change, and give them the tools to do so. Easier said than done...
Sunday, May 9, 2010
Green Chemistry
Source: Chemistry Innovations in Sustainable Development
By: The Natural Edge Project (‘TNEP’) 2008
Reflection:
Allow me an analogy: plastic is to our lives what high fructose corn syrup is to our diets. It is utterly pervasive, harmful in large doses, and largely taken for granted, meaning, we don’t think about it until we try to envision life without it. Diet without HFCS? Say goodbye to cheap and tasty everything, from bread to ketchup. Life without plastic? Goodbye car parts, Tupperware, shoes, clothing, appliances, carpeting, etc. etc. etc.
None of this is to say we can’t develop alternative that perform just as well as or better than these pervasive substances. We can now make plastic out of corn, and it seems like there’s a new ad for some new sweetener (All Natural!) every time I turn on the TV.
What’s my point? “Plastic” is just one example of a pervasive chemical, and that label is attached to dozens, maybe hundreds of materials with similar characteristics but different chemical ingredients and manufacturing methods. And plastic is just one of thousands of synthetic (i.e. human-made, not naturally occurring) materials that pervade our lives and which we take completely for granted. To envision a future without a lot of these materials strains the imagination, yet that is exactly what we must do.
Such is the focus of Green Chemistry. To maintain our current quality of life without pervasive, synthetic materials (because chemical is such a vague, messy term) would be, dare I say, impossible. We need to engage in some critical thinking, figure out how these materials serve us, find ways to provide those same services using alternative, sustainable materials, or learn to live without. As always, easier said than done, but we don’t really have a choice. Interface is the most oft-cited success story in this vein.
There are several aspects of Green Chemistry I appreciate. First, the 12 Principles of Green Engineering and 12 Principles of Green Chemistry offer simple, straightforward guidelines for innovation, which is the second strength of the document. I’ve said it before, and I’ll say it again: we’re good at innovation. Why do you think HFCS became so prevalent? Because we had mountains (literally) of surplus corn and needed to figure out what to do with it. The fact that corn derivatives can be found EVERYWHERE in our lives is proof of our ability to innovate (misguided though it turned out to be).
By: The Natural Edge Project (‘TNEP’) 2008
Reflection:
Allow me an analogy: plastic is to our lives what high fructose corn syrup is to our diets. It is utterly pervasive, harmful in large doses, and largely taken for granted, meaning, we don’t think about it until we try to envision life without it. Diet without HFCS? Say goodbye to cheap and tasty everything, from bread to ketchup. Life without plastic? Goodbye car parts, Tupperware, shoes, clothing, appliances, carpeting, etc. etc. etc.
None of this is to say we can’t develop alternative that perform just as well as or better than these pervasive substances. We can now make plastic out of corn, and it seems like there’s a new ad for some new sweetener (All Natural!) every time I turn on the TV.
What’s my point? “Plastic” is just one example of a pervasive chemical, and that label is attached to dozens, maybe hundreds of materials with similar characteristics but different chemical ingredients and manufacturing methods. And plastic is just one of thousands of synthetic (i.e. human-made, not naturally occurring) materials that pervade our lives and which we take completely for granted. To envision a future without a lot of these materials strains the imagination, yet that is exactly what we must do.
Such is the focus of Green Chemistry. To maintain our current quality of life without pervasive, synthetic materials (because chemical is such a vague, messy term) would be, dare I say, impossible. We need to engage in some critical thinking, figure out how these materials serve us, find ways to provide those same services using alternative, sustainable materials, or learn to live without. As always, easier said than done, but we don’t really have a choice. Interface is the most oft-cited success story in this vein.
There are several aspects of Green Chemistry I appreciate. First, the 12 Principles of Green Engineering and 12 Principles of Green Chemistry offer simple, straightforward guidelines for innovation, which is the second strength of the document. I’ve said it before, and I’ll say it again: we’re good at innovation. Why do you think HFCS became so prevalent? Because we had mountains (literally) of surplus corn and needed to figure out what to do with it. The fact that corn derivatives can be found EVERYWHERE in our lives is proof of our ability to innovate (misguided though it turned out to be).
Saturday, May 8, 2010
Design For Sustainability
Source: Design for Sustainability
By: Indeco Strategic Planning, 1997
Reflection:
This is not the first document we’ve looked at that deals with the need to redesign our products and alter our patterns of consumption in the name of sustainability. As with those resources, I find this one to be utterly logical and, dare I say, obvious. Once I attempted to look objectively at these things, at our “stuff” and the patterns with which we consume it, (potential PhD dissertation: is that possible?), it really did become obvious that The Way Things Are is not sustainable, and even if everybody on Earth lived like me, we still would not be living sustainably. That’s a bitter pill to swallow.
So, if this is obvious, and not just to me, why aren’t all our products designed to be sustainable? What has prevented that transition? After all, this document is thirteen years old. That’s a fair amount of time to expect change. Furthermore, Design For Sustainability contains several mini case studies outlining companies that are already successfully implementing these ideas. But, for better or worse, these sustainability initiatives are not what these companies are known for. We like Volvo because they make safe cars, not because they’ve embraced some sustainable ideals. It's better, because it shows that “mainstream” success and sustainable business practices can coexist. Worse, because it gives short shrift to those sustainable initiatives. Again, we’ve talked about the need to communicate before. Changing one individual, or one family, or one business, or one city, or even one country, isn’t enough. These are big problems, and if solutions exist, we need to make sure everybody knows.
Fast forward 24 hours. I recently moved (hence the lack of recent posts) and I don’t yet have an internet connection at my new place. As such, I had time to sleep on the above, ruminate, and as usual, I came up with some other stuff. Coincidentally enough, in looking at some previous comments from Dr. K, I realized that what I came up with ties in nicely with some things I should have replied to long ago, so here goes.
Looking back to my post on Sustainability Reporting, the comment was, sustainability has been shown to negatively impact efficiency and innovation. The questions were: (1) Are you surprised by these findings? (2) Do you think this is the Achilles heal of sustainability? (3) How might human rights be dealt with in order to succeed yet NOT compromise sustainability?
Am I surprised by these findings? I am not surprised that concerning yourself with the human resources aspects negatively affects efficiency. People can be pushed to be more productive and more efficient long past the point where it starts to affect their physical and emotional well-being. In some cases, workers will put up with this, and in others, they may not. The point is, disregarding physical and emotional well-being, people could be more productive in a given amount of time, which is just another way of defining efficiency.
This is the point that ties into the above post. The epiphany I had upon awaking today was, our “stuff” needs to get more expensive. At some point in the past, I questioned whether was money was an accurate analog for resources. It is not. Because we have gotten so efficient, and because we have gotten so good at consuming raw materials, the cost of our stuff has decreased. What we pay no longer reflects the raw materials therein. Therefore, if we want to rely on market forces to lead us to consume sustainably, we must pay more for our stuff. This argument has been put forth many times in regard to food. Food has never been less expensive than it is now. We have never devoted a smaller part of our disposable income to food than we do now, but the price of that food is dependent on cheap oil. When oil is no longer cheap, and unless we have figured out some other way of fertilizing and transporting our food, we will be faced with the prospect of paying the true cost of our food. It will be more expensive, and we will consume less. Those who try to eat local and organic are getting closer to paying the true cost of food, and in many cases, it is more expensive. So maybe sacrificing efficiency for the sake of human welfare is a good thing. How you would make that case to a business manager is another matter.
The relationship between sustainable business and innovation is a little more puzzling, and I don’t know what to make of it. Superficially, I can see no reason for this connection, unless it is a direct result of the above, since innovation is one measure of productivity/efficiency.
Whatever that connection, the argument brings us full circle, back to the moral standard of sustainability. If one asked a business manager to trade efficiency and innovation for happier, healthier workers, it would be a hard decision, unless you accept that happy and healthy workers are the only sustainable option. Any business manager, given the choice of a business model that will work and one that won’t, will choose the model that works. Of course, saying a business model will work is easy to say, harder to quantify, and much harder to prove.
By: Indeco Strategic Planning, 1997
Reflection:
This is not the first document we’ve looked at that deals with the need to redesign our products and alter our patterns of consumption in the name of sustainability. As with those resources, I find this one to be utterly logical and, dare I say, obvious. Once I attempted to look objectively at these things, at our “stuff” and the patterns with which we consume it, (potential PhD dissertation: is that possible?), it really did become obvious that The Way Things Are is not sustainable, and even if everybody on Earth lived like me, we still would not be living sustainably. That’s a bitter pill to swallow.
So, if this is obvious, and not just to me, why aren’t all our products designed to be sustainable? What has prevented that transition? After all, this document is thirteen years old. That’s a fair amount of time to expect change. Furthermore, Design For Sustainability contains several mini case studies outlining companies that are already successfully implementing these ideas. But, for better or worse, these sustainability initiatives are not what these companies are known for. We like Volvo because they make safe cars, not because they’ve embraced some sustainable ideals. It's better, because it shows that “mainstream” success and sustainable business practices can coexist. Worse, because it gives short shrift to those sustainable initiatives. Again, we’ve talked about the need to communicate before. Changing one individual, or one family, or one business, or one city, or even one country, isn’t enough. These are big problems, and if solutions exist, we need to make sure everybody knows.
Fast forward 24 hours. I recently moved (hence the lack of recent posts) and I don’t yet have an internet connection at my new place. As such, I had time to sleep on the above, ruminate, and as usual, I came up with some other stuff. Coincidentally enough, in looking at some previous comments from Dr. K, I realized that what I came up with ties in nicely with some things I should have replied to long ago, so here goes.
Looking back to my post on Sustainability Reporting, the comment was, sustainability has been shown to negatively impact efficiency and innovation. The questions were: (1) Are you surprised by these findings? (2) Do you think this is the Achilles heal of sustainability? (3) How might human rights be dealt with in order to succeed yet NOT compromise sustainability?
Am I surprised by these findings? I am not surprised that concerning yourself with the human resources aspects negatively affects efficiency. People can be pushed to be more productive and more efficient long past the point where it starts to affect their physical and emotional well-being. In some cases, workers will put up with this, and in others, they may not. The point is, disregarding physical and emotional well-being, people could be more productive in a given amount of time, which is just another way of defining efficiency.
This is the point that ties into the above post. The epiphany I had upon awaking today was, our “stuff” needs to get more expensive. At some point in the past, I questioned whether was money was an accurate analog for resources. It is not. Because we have gotten so efficient, and because we have gotten so good at consuming raw materials, the cost of our stuff has decreased. What we pay no longer reflects the raw materials therein. Therefore, if we want to rely on market forces to lead us to consume sustainably, we must pay more for our stuff. This argument has been put forth many times in regard to food. Food has never been less expensive than it is now. We have never devoted a smaller part of our disposable income to food than we do now, but the price of that food is dependent on cheap oil. When oil is no longer cheap, and unless we have figured out some other way of fertilizing and transporting our food, we will be faced with the prospect of paying the true cost of our food. It will be more expensive, and we will consume less. Those who try to eat local and organic are getting closer to paying the true cost of food, and in many cases, it is more expensive. So maybe sacrificing efficiency for the sake of human welfare is a good thing. How you would make that case to a business manager is another matter.
The relationship between sustainable business and innovation is a little more puzzling, and I don’t know what to make of it. Superficially, I can see no reason for this connection, unless it is a direct result of the above, since innovation is one measure of productivity/efficiency.
Whatever that connection, the argument brings us full circle, back to the moral standard of sustainability. If one asked a business manager to trade efficiency and innovation for happier, healthier workers, it would be a hard decision, unless you accept that happy and healthy workers are the only sustainable option. Any business manager, given the choice of a business model that will work and one that won’t, will choose the model that works. Of course, saying a business model will work is easy to say, harder to quantify, and much harder to prove.
In Response to Some Previous Comments
This is going back a ways, but I need to address the comments left on my Extended Product Responsibility post, both because it is my class-imposed duty to do so, and because it deals with a topic at the heart of sustainability, and to not respond would be negligent.
The comment in question makes the case for sustainability as a moral standard. I resisted this idea for a long time, until I realized my arguments against it were purely semantic. When I said I was trying to rise above labels like "good" and "immoral" in favor of recognizing systems that work or don't work, what I was saying is sustainable or unsustainable. Furthermore, as I made those statements, I was in no way accounting for the undeniable group of people for whom sustainability is not important, those people who would agree the world is going down the crapper, but don't care, for whatever reason.
There was a time when I would have thought that was OK. So you don't care that the world needs saving? Well, it won't likely become unbearable until after I'm gone, so believe whatever you want. Now I've got nieces and nephews, and children of my own is no longer a ridiculous thought, and the idea that we could solve these problems but decided it was easier to just pass them along to the next generation because my life will probably turn out OK...that's literally disgusting. It turns my stomach. How could I possibly look those nieces and nephews in the eye and feel OK, knowing I could have done something and made the choice not to.
That is a moral standard.
The comment in question makes the case for sustainability as a moral standard. I resisted this idea for a long time, until I realized my arguments against it were purely semantic. When I said I was trying to rise above labels like "good" and "immoral" in favor of recognizing systems that work or don't work, what I was saying is sustainable or unsustainable. Furthermore, as I made those statements, I was in no way accounting for the undeniable group of people for whom sustainability is not important, those people who would agree the world is going down the crapper, but don't care, for whatever reason.
There was a time when I would have thought that was OK. So you don't care that the world needs saving? Well, it won't likely become unbearable until after I'm gone, so believe whatever you want. Now I've got nieces and nephews, and children of my own is no longer a ridiculous thought, and the idea that we could solve these problems but decided it was easier to just pass them along to the next generation because my life will probably turn out OK...that's literally disgusting. It turns my stomach. How could I possibly look those nieces and nephews in the eye and feel OK, knowing I could have done something and made the choice not to.
That is a moral standard.
Monday, April 26, 2010
Leasing
Source: Leasing: A Step Toward Producer Responsibility
By: Bette K. Fishbein; Lorraine S. McGarry; Patricia S. Dillon; INFORM 2000
Synopsis: Leasing, if executed properly, has the potential to close the materials loop of production. Leasing explores how and offers case studies of companies with leasing programs already in place.
Reflection:
I had every intention of treating this resource much like I have previous ones, by applying it to that context with which I have the most experience, bikes. See, bikes are something of a paradox in the consideration of sustainability. On the one hand, they are a solution to so many of the problems with which we’re faced. Riding a bike to work addresses all of the following: physical and emotional health, traffic congestion, fossil fuel use, GHG emissions… I’m sure there are others, but those are the biggies. No question, riding bikes is a good thing.
On the other hand, bikes are a technology-driven industry, and we are as guilty as any of perpetrating planned obsolescence. Many, many years ago, bikes had one speed and you couldn’t coast. Then, you could coast. Then you could select from a few gears, then five, then ten. Now, you can ride a bike that has 30 different gears, or via a different mechanism, one that has a CVT, allowing you to select an INFINITE number of gears! Whoa! Life is good. Well, every time the bike industry added a gear, it made one of the previous generations obsolete, and a product doesn’t have to be obsolete for very long before the manufacturer stops supporting it. There are parts of a bike that wear out. On a timeline long enough, there will come a day when the parts required to keep an old bike working are simply no longer available. It is then a pretty wall-hanging. Or a boat anchor. Or garbage. It is no longer a usable bike. There is a class of cyclists, affectionately referred to as retro-grouches, for whom this seemingly inevitable progression is a continual source of aggravation. Why can’t we just make a bike that’ll last forever?
It was at this point I was going to construct Reality B, in which The Bike Company wasn’t in the business of producing and selling bikes, but in the business of leasing bikes as a service to those desiring to ride. I really struggled with this seemingly simple mental exercise, and a brief explanation will illustrate why and hopefully get me to a deeper understanding of how leasing fits into sustainability. In this reality, the variables that would make The Bike Company competitive would be durability, reliability, choice, and yes, performance, although it’s hard to say in which order those would be valued. It’s probably safe to assume that in Reality B that people will still value the things they valued before. The cyclist with buckets of disposable income is still going to look for the bike that performs best regardless of cost, and the cyclist who looks for the most durable and reliable product will use the service that can provide her with that. So the market doesn’t necessarily change. What changes?
The first thing that pops to mind is the bikes themselves. As a mechanic, I can personally attest that less expensive, lower performing bikes are harder to work on and require more attention. So, it stands to reason that the bikes available for lease will be of higher quality, creating a win-win situation for dealer and cyclist alike. My next question was, would it slow the pace of innovation? With current market incentives, planned obsolescence means bike companies are completely revamping their lines every three or four years (that’s an estimate based on anecdotal, personal evidence). As mentioned above, some of these changes involve adding gears, to which most cyclist reply, “whattya need all them gears for?” Non-bike examples would be things like increased horsepower in autos, steam cycles in washing machines, more memory in computers, etc. What do these have in common? I’d say they’re all examples of technological innovation we didn’t know we wanted until the companies showed it to us and told us we needed it. So is this innovation for the sake of innovation (and sales), or is it really adding to our quality of life? Good question, but I don’t want to wander too far astray.
Where were we? Yes, the effect of leasing on innovation. If I understood the resource correctly, this is where the difference between an operating vs. capital lease becomes important. As Leasing points out, only operating leases create the kind of market pressure/monetary incentives, by ensuring that the manufacturer retains ownership of the item after use, that can potentially close the loop on the production of goods. So going back to the bike example, from The Bike Company’s perspective, they want to be producing a product that retains value (as the proud owner of no less than six bikes, I can attest that they do not retain value; it never pays to sell). This could mean a bike that might be refurbished and re-leased, dismantled so the parts can be reused or recycled, etc. Again, the question of innovation pops up, but I think the point Dr. K made regarding one of my previous points is starting to sink in. Innovation isn’t entirely dependent on raw materials. If we want a high performance bike made out of the parts from older bikes, and people are willing to pay for it, we’ll make it happen.
And that’s kind of where I’ve left it. I still have a lot of questions about the philosophy of leasing. As a renter, one of my biggest worries is that I’m left with nothing tangible when I’ve fulfilled a lease and moved out. I’ve paid for the service of being sheltered, but I want something that’s mine. How does leasing other objects in our lives relate to that? Can leasing offer us the choice we’ve come to expect? If not, does it have a chance at success? I encourage any and all (not just the prof) to weigh in on this if you’d like.
By: Bette K. Fishbein; Lorraine S. McGarry; Patricia S. Dillon; INFORM 2000
Synopsis: Leasing, if executed properly, has the potential to close the materials loop of production. Leasing explores how and offers case studies of companies with leasing programs already in place.
Reflection:
I had every intention of treating this resource much like I have previous ones, by applying it to that context with which I have the most experience, bikes. See, bikes are something of a paradox in the consideration of sustainability. On the one hand, they are a solution to so many of the problems with which we’re faced. Riding a bike to work addresses all of the following: physical and emotional health, traffic congestion, fossil fuel use, GHG emissions… I’m sure there are others, but those are the biggies. No question, riding bikes is a good thing.
On the other hand, bikes are a technology-driven industry, and we are as guilty as any of perpetrating planned obsolescence. Many, many years ago, bikes had one speed and you couldn’t coast. Then, you could coast. Then you could select from a few gears, then five, then ten. Now, you can ride a bike that has 30 different gears, or via a different mechanism, one that has a CVT, allowing you to select an INFINITE number of gears! Whoa! Life is good. Well, every time the bike industry added a gear, it made one of the previous generations obsolete, and a product doesn’t have to be obsolete for very long before the manufacturer stops supporting it. There are parts of a bike that wear out. On a timeline long enough, there will come a day when the parts required to keep an old bike working are simply no longer available. It is then a pretty wall-hanging. Or a boat anchor. Or garbage. It is no longer a usable bike. There is a class of cyclists, affectionately referred to as retro-grouches, for whom this seemingly inevitable progression is a continual source of aggravation. Why can’t we just make a bike that’ll last forever?
It was at this point I was going to construct Reality B, in which The Bike Company wasn’t in the business of producing and selling bikes, but in the business of leasing bikes as a service to those desiring to ride. I really struggled with this seemingly simple mental exercise, and a brief explanation will illustrate why and hopefully get me to a deeper understanding of how leasing fits into sustainability. In this reality, the variables that would make The Bike Company competitive would be durability, reliability, choice, and yes, performance, although it’s hard to say in which order those would be valued. It’s probably safe to assume that in Reality B that people will still value the things they valued before. The cyclist with buckets of disposable income is still going to look for the bike that performs best regardless of cost, and the cyclist who looks for the most durable and reliable product will use the service that can provide her with that. So the market doesn’t necessarily change. What changes?
The first thing that pops to mind is the bikes themselves. As a mechanic, I can personally attest that less expensive, lower performing bikes are harder to work on and require more attention. So, it stands to reason that the bikes available for lease will be of higher quality, creating a win-win situation for dealer and cyclist alike. My next question was, would it slow the pace of innovation? With current market incentives, planned obsolescence means bike companies are completely revamping their lines every three or four years (that’s an estimate based on anecdotal, personal evidence). As mentioned above, some of these changes involve adding gears, to which most cyclist reply, “whattya need all them gears for?” Non-bike examples would be things like increased horsepower in autos, steam cycles in washing machines, more memory in computers, etc. What do these have in common? I’d say they’re all examples of technological innovation we didn’t know we wanted until the companies showed it to us and told us we needed it. So is this innovation for the sake of innovation (and sales), or is it really adding to our quality of life? Good question, but I don’t want to wander too far astray.
Where were we? Yes, the effect of leasing on innovation. If I understood the resource correctly, this is where the difference between an operating vs. capital lease becomes important. As Leasing points out, only operating leases create the kind of market pressure/monetary incentives, by ensuring that the manufacturer retains ownership of the item after use, that can potentially close the loop on the production of goods. So going back to the bike example, from The Bike Company’s perspective, they want to be producing a product that retains value (as the proud owner of no less than six bikes, I can attest that they do not retain value; it never pays to sell). This could mean a bike that might be refurbished and re-leased, dismantled so the parts can be reused or recycled, etc. Again, the question of innovation pops up, but I think the point Dr. K made regarding one of my previous points is starting to sink in. Innovation isn’t entirely dependent on raw materials. If we want a high performance bike made out of the parts from older bikes, and people are willing to pay for it, we’ll make it happen.
And that’s kind of where I’ve left it. I still have a lot of questions about the philosophy of leasing. As a renter, one of my biggest worries is that I’m left with nothing tangible when I’ve fulfilled a lease and moved out. I’ve paid for the service of being sheltered, but I want something that’s mine. How does leasing other objects in our lives relate to that? Can leasing offer us the choice we’ve come to expect? If not, does it have a chance at success? I encourage any and all (not just the prof) to weigh in on this if you’d like.
Monday, April 19, 2010
Extended Product Responsibility
Source: Extended Product Responsibility
By: Beverley Thorpe, Iza Kruszewska and Alexandra McPherson of Clean Production Action. 2004
Synopsis: Extended Product Responsibility (EPR) is a transfer of responsibility from the consumer to the manufacturer regarding the disposal of goods when they (the products, not the producers) have outlived their useful lives.
Reflection:
Note: for the purpose of this post, I will be using the term “disposal” to refer to any process that happens to a product after it has outlived its useful life, from landfilling to recycling. I know, disposal has a lot of connotations. Tell me if you have a better term.
This is an odd subject for me. When EPR first came to my attention, I had two reactions. First, I thought it was a great idea. It is logical. It creates pressure to make products that perform well for a long time, which in turn decreases the overall amount of waste produced. It creates a more reliable supply of materials for recycling or re-purposing. As this resource so clearly states, “it puts the party with the greatest ability to impact the design of the product in charge of its disposal.” All of these are unquestionably good, yet in the back of my mind, there was some nagging, niggling detail upon which I could not quite put my finger. I was missing something, but what?
In order to answer that, we need to go all the way back to our discussion of planned obsolescence. This morning, I rode my bike to work. Riding to work is one of the most positive aspects of my life, made better by a variety of bikes, all of which rely on technology to make them lighter in weight and higher in performance. I am typing this on a three year old MacBook. It is not inaccurate to say my education would not be possible without it, and education holds a major stake in my future and my satisfaction or lack thereof. My point is, technology has made my life better, and I don’t know that my bikes would perform as well or my computer as reliably (sort of a laugh since I’m just recovering from a hard drive crash) if Cannondale and Apple were designing their products not to perform as well as possible, but to be easily and inexpensively disposed of. Hrmmmm.
In a recent conversation with a friend, we were talking about the relationship between morals and science. Without falling too deeply into that fascinating rabbit-hole, I was trying to make the case that moral and immoral have no subjective definitions, and that we need to start looking at systems and whether or not they work or don’t, i.e. are they sustainable, a question about which science has a lot to say. My point in this rambling is that, as much as it pains me to say it, nice bikes and fast computers may not be part of a system that works. Maybe we can have our cake and eat it too, but the sooner we wrap our heads around the possibility that that ain’t so, the better.
The flip side of that coin is acknowledging the benefits of a future in which we don’t need to worry about the problems associated with waste disposal, which are too numerous to list here (although our resource does a pretty good job) and which we’ve lived with for so long that to consider a future without them strains the imagination. In a good way.
All that being said, I am going to make a prediction. Right now, the world revolves around money and market forces. All things being equal, I believe people would purchase products designed specifically for ease of disposal. But all things are rarely equal. If Apple can’t make a fast computer that is also easily disposed of, they will not make ease of disposal a priority. Same goes for everything from cars to dishwashers. The upside to this seemingly pessimistic prediction is something I’ve mentioned before: we’re really good at innovation. I absolutely believe the eggheads at Apple are capable of making a computer that is both high-performing and easily disposed of. We just need to be careful to not fall into the trap of thinking we can purchase sustainability.
By: Beverley Thorpe, Iza Kruszewska and Alexandra McPherson of Clean Production Action. 2004
Synopsis: Extended Product Responsibility (EPR) is a transfer of responsibility from the consumer to the manufacturer regarding the disposal of goods when they (the products, not the producers) have outlived their useful lives.
Reflection:
Note: for the purpose of this post, I will be using the term “disposal” to refer to any process that happens to a product after it has outlived its useful life, from landfilling to recycling. I know, disposal has a lot of connotations. Tell me if you have a better term.
This is an odd subject for me. When EPR first came to my attention, I had two reactions. First, I thought it was a great idea. It is logical. It creates pressure to make products that perform well for a long time, which in turn decreases the overall amount of waste produced. It creates a more reliable supply of materials for recycling or re-purposing. As this resource so clearly states, “it puts the party with the greatest ability to impact the design of the product in charge of its disposal.” All of these are unquestionably good, yet in the back of my mind, there was some nagging, niggling detail upon which I could not quite put my finger. I was missing something, but what?
In order to answer that, we need to go all the way back to our discussion of planned obsolescence. This morning, I rode my bike to work. Riding to work is one of the most positive aspects of my life, made better by a variety of bikes, all of which rely on technology to make them lighter in weight and higher in performance. I am typing this on a three year old MacBook. It is not inaccurate to say my education would not be possible without it, and education holds a major stake in my future and my satisfaction or lack thereof. My point is, technology has made my life better, and I don’t know that my bikes would perform as well or my computer as reliably (sort of a laugh since I’m just recovering from a hard drive crash) if Cannondale and Apple were designing their products not to perform as well as possible, but to be easily and inexpensively disposed of. Hrmmmm.
In a recent conversation with a friend, we were talking about the relationship between morals and science. Without falling too deeply into that fascinating rabbit-hole, I was trying to make the case that moral and immoral have no subjective definitions, and that we need to start looking at systems and whether or not they work or don’t, i.e. are they sustainable, a question about which science has a lot to say. My point in this rambling is that, as much as it pains me to say it, nice bikes and fast computers may not be part of a system that works. Maybe we can have our cake and eat it too, but the sooner we wrap our heads around the possibility that that ain’t so, the better.
The flip side of that coin is acknowledging the benefits of a future in which we don’t need to worry about the problems associated with waste disposal, which are too numerous to list here (although our resource does a pretty good job) and which we’ve lived with for so long that to consider a future without them strains the imagination. In a good way.
All that being said, I am going to make a prediction. Right now, the world revolves around money and market forces. All things being equal, I believe people would purchase products designed specifically for ease of disposal. But all things are rarely equal. If Apple can’t make a fast computer that is also easily disposed of, they will not make ease of disposal a priority. Same goes for everything from cars to dishwashers. The upside to this seemingly pessimistic prediction is something I’ve mentioned before: we’re really good at innovation. I absolutely believe the eggheads at Apple are capable of making a computer that is both high-performing and easily disposed of. We just need to be careful to not fall into the trap of thinking we can purchase sustainability.
Wednesday, April 14, 2010
Ecolabelling
Source: INTRODUCTION TO ECOLABELLING
By: GLOBAL ECOLABELLING NETWORK
Synopsis: Ecolabelling is the process of identifying goods and services according to their environmental impact assessed using (predominantly) life cycle analysis.
Reflection:
Recently, The Health Care Bill was passed. Contained therein was a provision that fast food purveyors must display calorie counts alongside menu items. The theory is that, with the obesity epidemic contributing considerably to health care costs, something must be done to empower people to lose weight. If they have all the information necessary to make healthy decisions, like calorie content, they’ll be less likely to select that Chipotle burrito with 1000 calories.
I’m skeptical.
I’m not sure how to say this tactfully, but here goes. Such attempts are based on the assumption that people will understand the information, will have the capacity to process it, and a value system that will lead them to make a sustainable decision. These assumptions simply are not true for a great number of people. For some, being obese is a happy tradeoff for a delicious and convenient meal. I fear the same will be true of ecolabels. For some, 500 horsepower is more important than fuel efficiency. For others, strawberries in January are more important than local and organic. There are thousands of these decisions to be made, and the assumption that what’s lead us astray is lack of information is shaky.
That said, the above isn’t a compelling reason not to try, and for the proportion of people out there for whom those assumptions are true, real change can be made, and it’s entirely plausible that such behavior could inspire and inform others to make sustainable decisions.
That is my greatest concern with this document, but it has many strong points, and a couple of other, smaller weaknesses. I like that the authors acknowledge the constraints of life cycle analysis. It is an involved process that takes time, and even when carried out with rigor, you are left with these six-of-one-half-dozen-of-the-other situations, e.g. in the bathroom I’m confronted with paper towels and electric hand dryers. Pulpwood is a sustainable resource. Cheap electricity is not. One needs to be disposed of, the other doesn’t. One has a relatively complicated mechanism that required raw materials and energy for manufacture, and it will wear out and need to be disposed of. The other has a simpler mechanism that will also wear out and require disposal. I could go on, but you get the point. These are not simple considerations, and this is just one example of thousands. So, we do the best with the best information we have, and we adapt to new information, a process discussed in the docoument.
The final strength of Intro to Ecolabelling is its acknowledgement of market forces. The argument can still be made that sustainable decisions are more expensive, the effect of which ranges from making a product less desirable to putting a product out of reach. If ecolabelling is to be part of the solution, it needs to acknowledge and account for this
By: GLOBAL ECOLABELLING NETWORK
Synopsis: Ecolabelling is the process of identifying goods and services according to their environmental impact assessed using (predominantly) life cycle analysis.
Reflection:
Recently, The Health Care Bill was passed. Contained therein was a provision that fast food purveyors must display calorie counts alongside menu items. The theory is that, with the obesity epidemic contributing considerably to health care costs, something must be done to empower people to lose weight. If they have all the information necessary to make healthy decisions, like calorie content, they’ll be less likely to select that Chipotle burrito with 1000 calories.
I’m skeptical.
I’m not sure how to say this tactfully, but here goes. Such attempts are based on the assumption that people will understand the information, will have the capacity to process it, and a value system that will lead them to make a sustainable decision. These assumptions simply are not true for a great number of people. For some, being obese is a happy tradeoff for a delicious and convenient meal. I fear the same will be true of ecolabels. For some, 500 horsepower is more important than fuel efficiency. For others, strawberries in January are more important than local and organic. There are thousands of these decisions to be made, and the assumption that what’s lead us astray is lack of information is shaky.
That said, the above isn’t a compelling reason not to try, and for the proportion of people out there for whom those assumptions are true, real change can be made, and it’s entirely plausible that such behavior could inspire and inform others to make sustainable decisions.
That is my greatest concern with this document, but it has many strong points, and a couple of other, smaller weaknesses. I like that the authors acknowledge the constraints of life cycle analysis. It is an involved process that takes time, and even when carried out with rigor, you are left with these six-of-one-half-dozen-of-the-other situations, e.g. in the bathroom I’m confronted with paper towels and electric hand dryers. Pulpwood is a sustainable resource. Cheap electricity is not. One needs to be disposed of, the other doesn’t. One has a relatively complicated mechanism that required raw materials and energy for manufacture, and it will wear out and need to be disposed of. The other has a simpler mechanism that will also wear out and require disposal. I could go on, but you get the point. These are not simple considerations, and this is just one example of thousands. So, we do the best with the best information we have, and we adapt to new information, a process discussed in the docoument.
The final strength of Intro to Ecolabelling is its acknowledgement of market forces. The argument can still be made that sustainable decisions are more expensive, the effect of which ranges from making a product less desirable to putting a product out of reach. If ecolabelling is to be part of the solution, it needs to acknowledge and account for this
Tuesday, April 13, 2010
A Citizen's Guide to Zero Waste
Source: A CITIZEN’S GUIDE TO ZERO WASTE A UNITED STATES / CANADIAN PERSPECTIVE
By Paul Connett and Bill Sheehan October 2001
Synopsis: Outlines the concepts of zero waste, steps to get there, and case studies of success stories.
Reflecton:
Not long ago, when I was hired on as the service manager of the local bike shop, I was concomitantly considering a thesis project for this degree. I had the idea that turning The Route into a zero-waste bike shop would make for a great project. I was stymied by three items: tires, innertubes, and non-recyclable plastic packaging. I had ideas for every other source of waste, from scrap metal to the lunches left so long in the fridge that they snapped at you if you got too close. Some of those solutions were more creative than others, and only time would have shown them to be sustainable or not. Well, things change, and the zero waste bike shop didn’t happen, but it was a great thought experiment, forcing me to contemplate waste differently than ever before. Mostly, my conclusion was that waste management would be most effective if it was happening way, way up the stream. I’ll try to get back to that thought before I leave this post.
Today, while rehearsing the route I’m hoping to ride to work tomorrow, I was struck by a minor epiphany. It would have hurt if I hadn’t been wearing a helmet. HA! No, the thought I had regarding waste management was that we are trammeled by lethargy and/or momentum (potential PhD thesis and/or good conversation for over a beer: are these different ways of stating the same phenomenon? Why or why not?). Despite a great desire to do so, I did not make the time to look up recycling statistics, but I know participation drops off the more complicated the system of sorting, i.e. single-sort systems experience greater participation than two and three stream systems. People don’t want to have to think about their waste, where it goes, or what happens to it once there. Furthermore, and related to momentum, we have been dealing with a system that has enabled this mindset for long enough that to change it can seem impossible. Zero waste?! Double ha!
Sorry, it’s getting late, and I get a little punchy when I’m tired. I have a point. If we are going to achieve zero waste (another question: Is zero waste necessary for sustainability?) it is my informed opinion that lethargy and momentum are the greatest hurdles which need to be overcome. How do we do that? The Citizen’s Guide actually addresses this very question.
What was the stimulus that precipitated the decline in popularity of SUVs? For increased interest in alternative energy initiatives? For keeping organic produce from overtaking the market? Money. In each of these cases, a sound argument could be made that the most important (though not the only important) variable is money. It is the variable around which the developed world revolves. I don’t see any reason why waste management would be any different from the above examples.
There are a couple of initiative mentioned in the Citizen’s Guide that use money as a motivator. I loved the idea of the garbage lottery. It’s novel, it’s marketable, it’s relatively easy to enforce, and in the case mentioned, it’s been proven effective. Let’s do it. I also like the pay-as-you-throw initiative. It’s intuitive and logical, and the infrastructure for implementation could be pretty simple (charging different prices for different sized waste containers). Again, let’s do it. Everywhere.
And, I would be remiss if I didn’t address some of the philosophical implications herein. “Nature makes no waste; waste is a human invention.” What a beautiful (and accurate, I might add) sentiment. As I get older, I reflect more and more on the things I’ve learned while pursuing outdoor activities. One of the things you learn on a backpacking trip is to waste as little as possible, because waste is more weight resting squarely on your back. It forces you to reconsider the very concept of waste. You start figuring out ways of turning ordinary objects into multitaskers. You rinse your dishes and drink the water, because if I packed that calorie in, you can bet I’m not dumping it out on the ground. Backpacking is also a great way of making you consider the issue of waste from an upstream perspective, because if you make waste, you’re packing it out. After dinner on night one is not the time to realize that polycarbonate egg holder wasn’t such a great idea. In the bike shop, I quickly realized that, once the product was in my shop, there was very little I could do about the packaging if it wasn't recyclable. If that waste is to be eliminated, it needs to happen before it gets to me. My point is that we (the developed world) have a unique perspective on waste, and that perspective needs to be addressed at some point in this discussion. I’ve said it once, and I’ll say it again. Sustainability lies in changed minds.
By Paul Connett and Bill Sheehan October 2001
Synopsis: Outlines the concepts of zero waste, steps to get there, and case studies of success stories.
Reflecton:
Not long ago, when I was hired on as the service manager of the local bike shop, I was concomitantly considering a thesis project for this degree. I had the idea that turning The Route into a zero-waste bike shop would make for a great project. I was stymied by three items: tires, innertubes, and non-recyclable plastic packaging. I had ideas for every other source of waste, from scrap metal to the lunches left so long in the fridge that they snapped at you if you got too close. Some of those solutions were more creative than others, and only time would have shown them to be sustainable or not. Well, things change, and the zero waste bike shop didn’t happen, but it was a great thought experiment, forcing me to contemplate waste differently than ever before. Mostly, my conclusion was that waste management would be most effective if it was happening way, way up the stream. I’ll try to get back to that thought before I leave this post.
Today, while rehearsing the route I’m hoping to ride to work tomorrow, I was struck by a minor epiphany. It would have hurt if I hadn’t been wearing a helmet. HA! No, the thought I had regarding waste management was that we are trammeled by lethargy and/or momentum (potential PhD thesis and/or good conversation for over a beer: are these different ways of stating the same phenomenon? Why or why not?). Despite a great desire to do so, I did not make the time to look up recycling statistics, but I know participation drops off the more complicated the system of sorting, i.e. single-sort systems experience greater participation than two and three stream systems. People don’t want to have to think about their waste, where it goes, or what happens to it once there. Furthermore, and related to momentum, we have been dealing with a system that has enabled this mindset for long enough that to change it can seem impossible. Zero waste?! Double ha!
Sorry, it’s getting late, and I get a little punchy when I’m tired. I have a point. If we are going to achieve zero waste (another question: Is zero waste necessary for sustainability?) it is my informed opinion that lethargy and momentum are the greatest hurdles which need to be overcome. How do we do that? The Citizen’s Guide actually addresses this very question.
What was the stimulus that precipitated the decline in popularity of SUVs? For increased interest in alternative energy initiatives? For keeping organic produce from overtaking the market? Money. In each of these cases, a sound argument could be made that the most important (though not the only important) variable is money. It is the variable around which the developed world revolves. I don’t see any reason why waste management would be any different from the above examples.
There are a couple of initiative mentioned in the Citizen’s Guide that use money as a motivator. I loved the idea of the garbage lottery. It’s novel, it’s marketable, it’s relatively easy to enforce, and in the case mentioned, it’s been proven effective. Let’s do it. I also like the pay-as-you-throw initiative. It’s intuitive and logical, and the infrastructure for implementation could be pretty simple (charging different prices for different sized waste containers). Again, let’s do it. Everywhere.
And, I would be remiss if I didn’t address some of the philosophical implications herein. “Nature makes no waste; waste is a human invention.” What a beautiful (and accurate, I might add) sentiment. As I get older, I reflect more and more on the things I’ve learned while pursuing outdoor activities. One of the things you learn on a backpacking trip is to waste as little as possible, because waste is more weight resting squarely on your back. It forces you to reconsider the very concept of waste. You start figuring out ways of turning ordinary objects into multitaskers. You rinse your dishes and drink the water, because if I packed that calorie in, you can bet I’m not dumping it out on the ground. Backpacking is also a great way of making you consider the issue of waste from an upstream perspective, because if you make waste, you’re packing it out. After dinner on night one is not the time to realize that polycarbonate egg holder wasn’t such a great idea. In the bike shop, I quickly realized that, once the product was in my shop, there was very little I could do about the packaging if it wasn't recyclable. If that waste is to be eliminated, it needs to happen before it gets to me. My point is that we (the developed world) have a unique perspective on waste, and that perspective needs to be addressed at some point in this discussion. I’ve said it once, and I’ll say it again. Sustainability lies in changed minds.
The Biggest of Questions?
No, "What is the meaning of life?" is probably the biggest question, but the question posed in the below link is pretty big. And the answer just might be a whole lot more important.
A Gun To Our Head: Are Technological Societies Suicidal?
A Gun To Our Head: Are Technological Societies Suicidal?
Sunday, April 11, 2010
Sustainable Development Reporting
Source: Sustainable Development Reporting, Striking the Balance
By Bert Heemskerk, Pasquale Pistorio, Martin Scicluna; World Business Council for Sustainable Development
Synopsis: “The main purpose of this report is to help companies to understand the added value that reporting can bring them. We also provide guidance, both to the initiated and the uninitiated, on how to report, thus complementing other initiatives which guide companies on what to report.” (foreword)
Reflection:
My apologies for the dearth of posts recently. Allow me an explanation (I promise it’s related to sustainability). I started a new job this week. I’m not going to advertise for whom, as I don’t know the ethics of disclosing business practices, and it is this company’s business practices that have me all excited (I’ll also say this: nothing disclosed herein will be a secret. In fact, I think it’s all on our website). A few examples: They are profitable. In fact, in these difficult economic times, they have been busy enough and profitable enough to expand. It may be obvious that a sustainable business must also be profitable, but it is so important it bears repeating. They are concerned about the environment. I don’t think much harm can come of telling you they are in the bike industry (given my interests, you might’ve guessed that anyway). Bikes are not guilt free. I own six or seven of them, the production of which consumed raw materials and a lot of energy. I justify this excessive consumption by riding one of them to work as often as possible. But there are few products out there that can be considered solutions on the scale of bikes. Related to both expansion and the environment, their newest buildings are LEED Gold certified. They own the largest solar array in the upper Midwest. They take care of their people, offering competitive wages and benefits and a dog-of-the-day program, in which employees can sign up to bring their pets to work. Anyway, my point is not to brag but to… No, my point is to brag. My new company is awesome, and I am proud to be a part of it. On to reporting!
I promised a connection, and here it is: my new company is clearly on the right path. I don’t yet know where the drive towards sustainable business comes from, and I don’t know who we’re telling about it. So, when reading resources such as Sustainable Development Reporting, I’m applying it to my new place of business. I can’t help it; it’s where my brain wants to go, and I’m taking that as a good sign. Because the fact is, we’re not going to single-handedly revolutionize the bike industry, or the business world, or the world-world. Problems are too big and we’re too small. And that, I suppose, is the impetus behind Sustainable Development Reporting. Our issues and solutions need to be qualified, quantified, scrutinized, and communicated. Furthermore, since these are global issues and we’re moving increasingly toward a globalized economy, there must exist standards so we can all get on the same page.
Regarding the last sentence. What do we mean by standards? Who is we? What is the same page? I’m not sure we have the best answers to these questions yet, although I think people would increasingly agree we’re all in this together, so we is everybody, all people, and by extension the systems upon which we depend. “Standards” and “same page” are a lot more controversial, and books, papers, and PhD theses have been written studying those concepts. But, like so many of the concepts and processes we’ve talked about, reporting is going to be evolutionary. Best practices will emerge, and those will be modified to get better.
Regarding Sustainable Development Reporting specifically, I found the document to be complete and I could certainly envision its utility in my future world-saving endeavors. Heck, maybe my new job and this document will lead to some kind of project to get me a little closer to those additional letters after my name.
By Bert Heemskerk, Pasquale Pistorio, Martin Scicluna; World Business Council for Sustainable Development
Synopsis: “The main purpose of this report is to help companies to understand the added value that reporting can bring them. We also provide guidance, both to the initiated and the uninitiated, on how to report, thus complementing other initiatives which guide companies on what to report.” (foreword)
Reflection:
My apologies for the dearth of posts recently. Allow me an explanation (I promise it’s related to sustainability). I started a new job this week. I’m not going to advertise for whom, as I don’t know the ethics of disclosing business practices, and it is this company’s business practices that have me all excited (I’ll also say this: nothing disclosed herein will be a secret. In fact, I think it’s all on our website). A few examples: They are profitable. In fact, in these difficult economic times, they have been busy enough and profitable enough to expand. It may be obvious that a sustainable business must also be profitable, but it is so important it bears repeating. They are concerned about the environment. I don’t think much harm can come of telling you they are in the bike industry (given my interests, you might’ve guessed that anyway). Bikes are not guilt free. I own six or seven of them, the production of which consumed raw materials and a lot of energy. I justify this excessive consumption by riding one of them to work as often as possible. But there are few products out there that can be considered solutions on the scale of bikes. Related to both expansion and the environment, their newest buildings are LEED Gold certified. They own the largest solar array in the upper Midwest. They take care of their people, offering competitive wages and benefits and a dog-of-the-day program, in which employees can sign up to bring their pets to work. Anyway, my point is not to brag but to… No, my point is to brag. My new company is awesome, and I am proud to be a part of it. On to reporting!
I promised a connection, and here it is: my new company is clearly on the right path. I don’t yet know where the drive towards sustainable business comes from, and I don’t know who we’re telling about it. So, when reading resources such as Sustainable Development Reporting, I’m applying it to my new place of business. I can’t help it; it’s where my brain wants to go, and I’m taking that as a good sign. Because the fact is, we’re not going to single-handedly revolutionize the bike industry, or the business world, or the world-world. Problems are too big and we’re too small. And that, I suppose, is the impetus behind Sustainable Development Reporting. Our issues and solutions need to be qualified, quantified, scrutinized, and communicated. Furthermore, since these are global issues and we’re moving increasingly toward a globalized economy, there must exist standards so we can all get on the same page.
Regarding the last sentence. What do we mean by standards? Who is we? What is the same page? I’m not sure we have the best answers to these questions yet, although I think people would increasingly agree we’re all in this together, so we is everybody, all people, and by extension the systems upon which we depend. “Standards” and “same page” are a lot more controversial, and books, papers, and PhD theses have been written studying those concepts. But, like so many of the concepts and processes we’ve talked about, reporting is going to be evolutionary. Best practices will emerge, and those will be modified to get better.
Regarding Sustainable Development Reporting specifically, I found the document to be complete and I could certainly envision its utility in my future world-saving endeavors. Heck, maybe my new job and this document will lead to some kind of project to get me a little closer to those additional letters after my name.
Thursday, April 1, 2010
Planning For Sustainability
Source: Planning for Sustainability, A Starter Guide
By: Alaya Boisvert, Pong Leung, Kim Mackrael, Chad Park and Mike Purcell; The Natural Step Canada; 2009
Reflection:
Those in the Sustainable Community Development program here at UWRF are familiar with The Natural Step (TNS). It’s a system/paradigm introduced in the first class we take. I don’t think it’s the only approach to sustainability, but it’s as good a place to start as any. Since I’m far more familiar with the concepts in this document, I’ll take this opportunity go give you what I see as the highlights of TNS.
The first is the four conditions a system must meet in order to be sustainable. I’ve hinted at and alluded to them in other posts, but it’s worth it to lay them out here:
In a sustainable society, nature is not subject to systematically increasing...
...concentrations of substances extracted from the earth’s crust,
...concentrations of substances produced by society,
...degradation by physical means,
and, in that society...
...people are not subject to conditions that systematically undermine their capacity to meet their needs
When considering these, I like to think of domestic analogies to put them in perspective. The first two state basically, if we make a mess of our house, we still have to live in it. If we make a big enough mess, it’s going to be toxic and kill us. The third is related. If we don’t take care of our house, it’s going to stop protecting us and, eventually, it will fall down. The last is perhaps the most oft-overlooked aspect of sustainability. We all have a survival instinct. It’s a lot stronger than we suspect. If it comes down to surviving today or worrying about sustainability tomorrow, we’re going to survive today, even if that means chopping down rainforests and dumping raw sewage into rivers.
The rest of the document lays out how you’d apply that to a given organization. The highlight of this is TNS’s ABCD Planning Process: Awareness, Baseline analysis, Compelling vision, Down to action. What I like about this is their emphasis on developing a vision and then working toward that vision. It seems this is backward from how changes normally occur and would prevent a lot of unintended consequences.
Perhaps the greatest strength of TNS is a combination of the above. You could pick apart the system conditions for sustainability, although they are so simple, and rooted so firmly in laws of nature that it would not be easy, and there are certainly other ways of implementing change than the ABCD approach, but taken an a system, from Business As Usual to a sustainable business, TNS is a straightforward path that does an excellent job of adapting to different situations. Now, if you’re a forward thinking organization with the foresight to hire a sustainability savant such as myself, that may not be such a big deal. But, if you’re new to the sustainability thing and want a relatively simple way to get there, TNS makes it about as straightforward as possible.
By: Alaya Boisvert, Pong Leung, Kim Mackrael, Chad Park and Mike Purcell; The Natural Step Canada; 2009
Reflection:
Those in the Sustainable Community Development program here at UWRF are familiar with The Natural Step (TNS). It’s a system/paradigm introduced in the first class we take. I don’t think it’s the only approach to sustainability, but it’s as good a place to start as any. Since I’m far more familiar with the concepts in this document, I’ll take this opportunity go give you what I see as the highlights of TNS.
The first is the four conditions a system must meet in order to be sustainable. I’ve hinted at and alluded to them in other posts, but it’s worth it to lay them out here:
In a sustainable society, nature is not subject to systematically increasing...
...concentrations of substances extracted from the earth’s crust,
...concentrations of substances produced by society,
...degradation by physical means,
and, in that society...
...people are not subject to conditions that systematically undermine their capacity to meet their needs
When considering these, I like to think of domestic analogies to put them in perspective. The first two state basically, if we make a mess of our house, we still have to live in it. If we make a big enough mess, it’s going to be toxic and kill us. The third is related. If we don’t take care of our house, it’s going to stop protecting us and, eventually, it will fall down. The last is perhaps the most oft-overlooked aspect of sustainability. We all have a survival instinct. It’s a lot stronger than we suspect. If it comes down to surviving today or worrying about sustainability tomorrow, we’re going to survive today, even if that means chopping down rainforests and dumping raw sewage into rivers.
The rest of the document lays out how you’d apply that to a given organization. The highlight of this is TNS’s ABCD Planning Process: Awareness, Baseline analysis, Compelling vision, Down to action. What I like about this is their emphasis on developing a vision and then working toward that vision. It seems this is backward from how changes normally occur and would prevent a lot of unintended consequences.
Perhaps the greatest strength of TNS is a combination of the above. You could pick apart the system conditions for sustainability, although they are so simple, and rooted so firmly in laws of nature that it would not be easy, and there are certainly other ways of implementing change than the ABCD approach, but taken an a system, from Business As Usual to a sustainable business, TNS is a straightforward path that does an excellent job of adapting to different situations. Now, if you’re a forward thinking organization with the foresight to hire a sustainability savant such as myself, that may not be such a big deal. But, if you’re new to the sustainability thing and want a relatively simple way to get there, TNS makes it about as straightforward as possible.
Wednesday, March 31, 2010
Investor Leadership On Climate Change
Source: Investor Leadership On Climate Change, An analysis of the investment community’s role on climate change, and snapshot of recent investor activity.
By UN Global Compact; UN Environment Programme Finance Initiative; Principles For Responsible Investment
Synopsis: Analysis of risk and opportunity regarding climate change is incomplete without considering the role of investment in the process of mitigation. Investor Leadership on Climate Change explores the relationship between climate change and investment.
Reflection:
Most of the talk surrounding anthropogenic climate change (ACC) deals with risk. If we don’t do this, this is what’s gonna happen. The flipside of that coin is opportunity, which gets talked about, but not as much. Most of that talk centers around business and employment opportunities, such as startup businesses in green energy and the jobs those businesses could create. That’s true, and it’s all well and good, but change on the scale necessary doesn’t happen without money. Lots and lots of money.
We’ve talked about investment before (Who Cares Wins) and the fundamental question of that document is also the fundamental question addressed by this one: why wouldn’t sustainable businesses be good investments? Investor Leadership On Climate Change takes it one step further, narrowing down the scope to look specifically at the relationship between investment and ACC.
And really, that relationship isn’t complicated. Accepting that Business As Usual is not sustainable and is in need of an overhaul, we’re looking at developing new technology, training and re-training staff, creating new and renovating existing infrastructure, etc. As much as we like stories of the American Dream, hauling ourselves up by our bootstraps, mom-and-pop businesses do not have the capital to undertake such an overhaul, and if they do, they likely represent portions of the business spectrum too small to mitigate climate change on the scale necessary. Big Business is Business As Usual. It was, in large part, Big Business that got us into this mess, so it’s Big Business that needs to play a leading role in getting us out. In re-reading the latter sentence, I realize it sounds vindictive, but that’s not my intent. My point is simply that these are big problems, affected by a lot of variables. Those variables can only be addressed by a sufficiently large entity, such as Big Business.
Perhaps the scariest paragraph in Investor Leadership on Climate Change is the following: “…a trajectory of very rapid growth in investment in low-carbon energy supply is required – reaching US$500 billion a year by 2020. Without this growth in investment, it is extremely unlikely that the necessary GHG stabilization levels will be achieved. We cannot afford a fall in levels of investment in this sector.” What makes this scary is politics. In the U.S, Big Business and Republican are all but synonymous. Recent polls show the majority of Republicans do not accept that climate change is being caused by human factors. If you don’t believe that Business As Usual caused these problems, where is the motivation to change it?
By UN Global Compact; UN Environment Programme Finance Initiative; Principles For Responsible Investment
Synopsis: Analysis of risk and opportunity regarding climate change is incomplete without considering the role of investment in the process of mitigation. Investor Leadership on Climate Change explores the relationship between climate change and investment.
Reflection:
Most of the talk surrounding anthropogenic climate change (ACC) deals with risk. If we don’t do this, this is what’s gonna happen. The flipside of that coin is opportunity, which gets talked about, but not as much. Most of that talk centers around business and employment opportunities, such as startup businesses in green energy and the jobs those businesses could create. That’s true, and it’s all well and good, but change on the scale necessary doesn’t happen without money. Lots and lots of money.
We’ve talked about investment before (Who Cares Wins) and the fundamental question of that document is also the fundamental question addressed by this one: why wouldn’t sustainable businesses be good investments? Investor Leadership On Climate Change takes it one step further, narrowing down the scope to look specifically at the relationship between investment and ACC.
And really, that relationship isn’t complicated. Accepting that Business As Usual is not sustainable and is in need of an overhaul, we’re looking at developing new technology, training and re-training staff, creating new and renovating existing infrastructure, etc. As much as we like stories of the American Dream, hauling ourselves up by our bootstraps, mom-and-pop businesses do not have the capital to undertake such an overhaul, and if they do, they likely represent portions of the business spectrum too small to mitigate climate change on the scale necessary. Big Business is Business As Usual. It was, in large part, Big Business that got us into this mess, so it’s Big Business that needs to play a leading role in getting us out. In re-reading the latter sentence, I realize it sounds vindictive, but that’s not my intent. My point is simply that these are big problems, affected by a lot of variables. Those variables can only be addressed by a sufficiently large entity, such as Big Business.
Perhaps the scariest paragraph in Investor Leadership on Climate Change is the following: “…a trajectory of very rapid growth in investment in low-carbon energy supply is required – reaching US$500 billion a year by 2020. Without this growth in investment, it is extremely unlikely that the necessary GHG stabilization levels will be achieved. We cannot afford a fall in levels of investment in this sector.” What makes this scary is politics. In the U.S, Big Business and Republican are all but synonymous. Recent polls show the majority of Republicans do not accept that climate change is being caused by human factors. If you don’t believe that Business As Usual caused these problems, where is the motivation to change it?
Tuesday, March 30, 2010
More on Belief
*WARNING* The following link is Rated R for adult language and sexual imagery. Click at your own risk.
If You Put Your Mind To It You Can Believe Anything
OK, so I get my news in equal parts from the NY Times, The Daily Show, and The Onion. I like a balanced, unbiased perspective. Kidding aside, there is wisdom in good satire, and I consider The Onion to be some of the best satire out there. I post the above link because it illustrates what may be the most serious issue standing between us and a sustainable culture/society. There is a staggering, intimidating, often terrifying amount of data telling us that The Way Things Are is not sustainable. As I've stated before, anything not sustainable will, by definition, eventually cease to exist. Between now and then, there is our quality of life to consider.
I'm also not advocating abandonment of skepticism. Skepticism is absolutely essential. In fact, skepticism underlies the scientific method; without it, there is no scientific method. However, on that grand continuum of belief, between naivete on one end and deluded rejection of reality on the other, is healthy skepticism. It is imperative we find that line, walk it, and communicate to others how to do the same.
If You Put Your Mind To It You Can Believe Anything
OK, so I get my news in equal parts from the NY Times, The Daily Show, and The Onion. I like a balanced, unbiased perspective. Kidding aside, there is wisdom in good satire, and I consider The Onion to be some of the best satire out there. I post the above link because it illustrates what may be the most serious issue standing between us and a sustainable culture/society. There is a staggering, intimidating, often terrifying amount of data telling us that The Way Things Are is not sustainable. As I've stated before, anything not sustainable will, by definition, eventually cease to exist. Between now and then, there is our quality of life to consider.
I'm also not advocating abandonment of skepticism. Skepticism is absolutely essential. In fact, skepticism underlies the scientific method; without it, there is no scientific method. However, on that grand continuum of belief, between naivete on one end and deluded rejection of reality on the other, is healthy skepticism. It is imperative we find that line, walk it, and communicate to others how to do the same.
Monday, March 29, 2010
Life Cycle Management
Source: Life Cycle Management, A Business Guide to Sustainability
By UN Environment Programme, 2007
Reflection:
“We can't solve problems by using the same kind of thinking we used when we created them."
The above quote, by Albert Einstein, is perhaps the most succinct way of summing up the changes necessary for a movement toward sustainability, but it’s particularly appropriate for thinking about life cycle management (LCM). In a nutshell, LCM is an attempt to control as many variables as possible in the life cycle of a given product, from raw material extraction to what happens to the product when it has outlived its useful life, in order to get those variables in line with the principles of sustainability.
The above quote is apt because traditionally, a manufacturer likely would not consider controlling variables outside it’s “roof,” i.e. a bicycle hub manufacturer wouldn’t worry about where or how the aluminum they use is mined. They would be concerned with the price and quality, and the mining and smelting would be the responsibility of the miners and smelters. Using an LCM approach, that same manufacturer would consider those variables their responsibility, and would control them as much as possible, which is to say, they may not be able to dictate which mining techniques are used, but would make the producers aware they represent a market demanding a product mined as responsibly as possible, or would communicate to the smelter they desire a product containing a minimum amount of recycled materials. In this respect, LCM is yet another example of sustainability through communication, using the market as a tool and an evolutionary process. Referring to the latter, quick changes through LCM may not be possible, so we must do the best we can, continually striving for improvement.
As far as Life Cycle Management as a resource is concerned, I found it to be a complete and compelling document; yet another I’m putting in my toolbox, to be brought out when some forward-thinking company hires me to make them sustainable. I especially appreciated the mini case studies included; it’s sometimes surprising where you can find sustainable business practices.
Also of note was the “Plan-Do-Check-Act” cycle in the section on implementation. As the semester progresses, I am finding more and more similarities in plans for implementation, regardless of what is being implemented. I’m not entirely sure what to make of this, other than it seems plausible that we’re looking at some kind of convergent evolution, which is a good thing. If it is indeed convergent evolution, it means we’re working with a best practice that has been tried and tweaked to work as well as possible with what we know now about how organizations operate.
By UN Environment Programme, 2007
Reflection:
“We can't solve problems by using the same kind of thinking we used when we created them."
The above quote, by Albert Einstein, is perhaps the most succinct way of summing up the changes necessary for a movement toward sustainability, but it’s particularly appropriate for thinking about life cycle management (LCM). In a nutshell, LCM is an attempt to control as many variables as possible in the life cycle of a given product, from raw material extraction to what happens to the product when it has outlived its useful life, in order to get those variables in line with the principles of sustainability.
The above quote is apt because traditionally, a manufacturer likely would not consider controlling variables outside it’s “roof,” i.e. a bicycle hub manufacturer wouldn’t worry about where or how the aluminum they use is mined. They would be concerned with the price and quality, and the mining and smelting would be the responsibility of the miners and smelters. Using an LCM approach, that same manufacturer would consider those variables their responsibility, and would control them as much as possible, which is to say, they may not be able to dictate which mining techniques are used, but would make the producers aware they represent a market demanding a product mined as responsibly as possible, or would communicate to the smelter they desire a product containing a minimum amount of recycled materials. In this respect, LCM is yet another example of sustainability through communication, using the market as a tool and an evolutionary process. Referring to the latter, quick changes through LCM may not be possible, so we must do the best we can, continually striving for improvement.
As far as Life Cycle Management as a resource is concerned, I found it to be a complete and compelling document; yet another I’m putting in my toolbox, to be brought out when some forward-thinking company hires me to make them sustainable. I especially appreciated the mini case studies included; it’s sometimes surprising where you can find sustainable business practices.
Also of note was the “Plan-Do-Check-Act” cycle in the section on implementation. As the semester progresses, I am finding more and more similarities in plans for implementation, regardless of what is being implemented. I’m not entirely sure what to make of this, other than it seems plausible that we’re looking at some kind of convergent evolution, which is a good thing. If it is indeed convergent evolution, it means we’re working with a best practice that has been tried and tweaked to work as well as possible with what we know now about how organizations operate.
Friday, March 26, 2010
Supply Chains
Sources:
Unchaining Value, Innovative Approaches to Sustainable Supply
The Lean and Green Supply Chain
By SustainAbility, UNEP, The Global Compact and USEPA Environmental Accounting Project respectively
Reflection:
The reflection that spurred my post about synthesis (A Little Synthesis) was catalyzed by these resources. In reading these, I was continually struck by the logic represented therein, which begged the question, why isn’t this Business As Usual? I was never struck by the revolutionary way in which they proposed supply chains be managed, nor case studies in which a company’s behavior represented a level of thinking to which we’re still striving. To be perfectly blunt and honest, my reaction was, “well…duh.” I still wonder what I might be missing.
My enduring understanding of these resources is one of disappointment, not in the resources themselves, or the information they contain, but in the fact that business practices that make so much sense, that represent sound risk management, efficient use of raw materials, streamlined distribution, etc. are categorized as “sustainable business practices.” Speaking in relative terms, these resources are relevant not because the authors are so advanced, but because Business As Usual is so far behind. We will all be better off when we catch up.
Unchaining Value, Innovative Approaches to Sustainable Supply
The Lean and Green Supply Chain
By SustainAbility, UNEP, The Global Compact and USEPA Environmental Accounting Project respectively
Reflection:
The reflection that spurred my post about synthesis (A Little Synthesis) was catalyzed by these resources. In reading these, I was continually struck by the logic represented therein, which begged the question, why isn’t this Business As Usual? I was never struck by the revolutionary way in which they proposed supply chains be managed, nor case studies in which a company’s behavior represented a level of thinking to which we’re still striving. To be perfectly blunt and honest, my reaction was, “well…duh.” I still wonder what I might be missing.
My enduring understanding of these resources is one of disappointment, not in the resources themselves, or the information they contain, but in the fact that business practices that make so much sense, that represent sound risk management, efficient use of raw materials, streamlined distribution, etc. are categorized as “sustainable business practices.” Speaking in relative terms, these resources are relevant not because the authors are so advanced, but because Business As Usual is so far behind. We will all be better off when we catch up.
Who Cares Wins
Source: Who Cares Wins: Connecting Financial Markets to a Changing World
By The Global Compact
Reflecton:
Why wouldn’t “sustainable businesses” be a good investment? After reading Who Cares Wins, this question is my enduring understanding.
The central assumption of Who Cares Wins is that the way environmental, social and corporate governance issues are managed is part of companies’ overall management quality needed to compete successfully. I challenge you, Loyal Readers, to show me that assumption is false. I’ve tried, and I cannot.
Keeping in mind that my knowledge of investing is exactly as deep and broad as my knowledge of law and socioanthropology, and also remembering that unemployed bike mechanics don’t have a lot of money to throw into the market, this is what I would look for in a business:
First, I want responsible management. I’m trusting them to use my money to make money, not lose it.
Second, and related to the first, is risk management. Risk is an unavoidable aspect of business and investment alike, and it is often indistinguishable from opportunity. This truth brought forth the cliché, you must spend money to make money.
Third, I want a company that is in touch with their market, past, present, and future. Past, because history can teach us a great deal about where we are and where we’re headed. Present, because markets are fast-paced and dynamic and you have to stay on top of them. Future should be self-explanatory.
None of this is a revelation. It’s a very simple understanding of what makes a viable corporation, and everything I’ve said applies equally to Business As Usual and sustainable business. Where does the difference lie?
My experience with investing has taught me that there exists a direct correlation between risk and rate of return. The higher the risk, the greater the rate of return, and vice versa. Accepting the notion that sustainable business is really Business As Usual with exceptional risk management on a longer-than-normal timeline, we get closer to an answer to our question. But if one must choose between safe and fast, I’d still choose safe.
By The Global Compact
Reflecton:
Why wouldn’t “sustainable businesses” be a good investment? After reading Who Cares Wins, this question is my enduring understanding.
The central assumption of Who Cares Wins is that the way environmental, social and corporate governance issues are managed is part of companies’ overall management quality needed to compete successfully. I challenge you, Loyal Readers, to show me that assumption is false. I’ve tried, and I cannot.
Keeping in mind that my knowledge of investing is exactly as deep and broad as my knowledge of law and socioanthropology, and also remembering that unemployed bike mechanics don’t have a lot of money to throw into the market, this is what I would look for in a business:
First, I want responsible management. I’m trusting them to use my money to make money, not lose it.
Second, and related to the first, is risk management. Risk is an unavoidable aspect of business and investment alike, and it is often indistinguishable from opportunity. This truth brought forth the cliché, you must spend money to make money.
Third, I want a company that is in touch with their market, past, present, and future. Past, because history can teach us a great deal about where we are and where we’re headed. Present, because markets are fast-paced and dynamic and you have to stay on top of them. Future should be self-explanatory.
None of this is a revelation. It’s a very simple understanding of what makes a viable corporation, and everything I’ve said applies equally to Business As Usual and sustainable business. Where does the difference lie?
My experience with investing has taught me that there exists a direct correlation between risk and rate of return. The higher the risk, the greater the rate of return, and vice versa. Accepting the notion that sustainable business is really Business As Usual with exceptional risk management on a longer-than-normal timeline, we get closer to an answer to our question. But if one must choose between safe and fast, I’d still choose safe.
Tuesday, March 23, 2010
Rethinking Business Regulation
Source: Rethinking Business Regulation, From Self-Regulation to Social Control
By Utting, Peter
Reflection: (My apologies for a rambling, disorganized post. In the midst of dealing with a difficult resource, my hard drive crashed, so getting back on track was a process, and I didn’t edit this one very well)
Again, this was a difficult resource for me. I have a rudimentary and incomplete understanding of corporate regulation and accountability, so considerable backtracking would need to occur in order for me to fully understand what overhauling or changing that regulation involves. I feel like I hardly have enough time for forward tracking, let alone backtracking, so I’m left with more questions than answers.
Through discussion with Smart People, several aspects of material in prior resources was reexamined, giving me a better understanding of what this resource is about. Most importantly was a key characteristic of the codes, standards, and frameworks discussed in my post of that title. All (or at least most) are voluntary, and were developed by corporations themselves. Self-awareness by/of corporations is important, but this creates a distinct conflict of interest for them. When the Founding Fathers drafted the Constitution, they recognized the difficulty in objectively regulating oneself and wrote a system of governance that featured checks and balances to keep the different branches of government honest and to prevent any one of them from acquiring too much power. It is the inability of corporations to objectively self-regulate in the best interests of everybody that creates problems. To whom are corporations responsible and accountable? If they answer only to shareholders, their priority will be maximizing profit. It seems this is the way things have been historically. An effect of this is making pollution control, emission control, efficient use of raw materials, etc. a lower priority. If it becomes more profitable to flush your garbage rather than recycling or repurposing it, we end up with sick ecosystems, the effects of which we’re now recognizing.
If, on the other hand, a corporation tries to balance profit with environmental stewardship and socially just business practices, it will not be as profitable in the short term. In Business-As-Usual, where emphasis is placed on the numbers for next quarter rather than next century, this puts that corporation at a disadvantage, making it vulnerable. It’s easy to see why, in our myopic society, the sustainable corporation is a new concept. In fact, this tension between profitability and corporate social responsibility is mentioned in Rethinking Business Regulation.
The next issue I see, related to the first, is the motivation for a corporation to voluntarily comply. In Rethinking Business Regulation, the author identifies several stages of self-regulation. It seems the corporations with which I’m familiar are in the “defensive” or “compliant” stages, in which they either deny they are part of the problem or adopt a policy but treat compliance as added cost. At that stage, there is little motivation to comply. In fact, compliance could be seen as a competitive disadvantage, and the corporation may be criticized by shareholders. As I see it, this is the role of marketing. I’ve seen examples of sustainable business practices being profitable, and those profitable companies have remained so without using their sustainable practices as a marketing tool, possibly because we’re not accustomed to sustainability (as I use the term in this blog) being a competitive advantage.
This is stupid, but in the interest of time, I’m going to wait to expand on that. What it does present is the opportunity to discuss how hardening regulation could help the corporation. Let’s start with an experiment you’ve already conducted. Walk down the cereal isle in your local grocery store. What proportion of the boxes make some statement using the label “natural”? Now, compare the ingredients of those to each other and to the cereals that are “unnatural”. Differences? It’s been a while since I’ve done this, but if memory serves, you will find unpronounceable ingredients on the boxes labeled “natural”. How can this be? The term “natural” is not regulated. There are no standards that must be met in order to put it on your packaging. As such, it is meaningless. After all, there’s no shortage of naturally occurring yet really nasty compounds.
“Organic” on the other hand is regulated, and the government has set standards that must be met in order for a product to be labeled as such. No matter the product, from soda pop to rolled oats, if it says organic, the ingredients will not have used synthetic fertilizers or pesticides. This is a good thing for consumer and grower alike, as it gives us information about our purchases and a powerful marketing tool for the grower.
This is why corporation could/will benefit from hardening this regulation. It will give them meaningful information that can be used to market their products.
The final thing I’d like to mention are the thoughts that run through my head when pondering business regulation. As I’ve mentioned in the past, my parents are republican in the traditional, small government interpretation of the word. Mom counts Ayn Rand as a formative influence and has voted Libertarian many times. Dad is a small business owner. They’ve had an undeniable influence on my political beliefs. When I read about regulation, it is them I hear, whispering about the inefficiencies of bureaucracies and the pitfalls of unintended consequences, and who can argue they’re wrong? There is a fear that regulation is a trammel, and if our business and industry are trammeled and others’ are not, we will be out-competed, and we will fail. Again, this is a logical, if not appropriate, concern, but it does not take into account the ability of our businesses, industries, and economy to adapt. Agriculture in the U.S. used to be based in large part on slave labor. That system was shown to be unsustainable and the government regulated it. Industry here and abroad used to depend on child labor. That system also was shown to be unsustainable, and it was regulated. Industry adapted. These are examples which the wisdom of time has made obviously unsustainable, but the Civil War shows it was not always so obvious, and a great many people couldn’t conceive of an economy without it. The transition to sustainable business will not be easy, smooth, or straightforward. There will be many setbacks and ample opportunity to question our motivation and efficacy, but I absolutely believe there will come a time when we look back on many of our current business practices with the same disbelief with which we view slavery and child labor.
By Utting, Peter
Reflection: (My apologies for a rambling, disorganized post. In the midst of dealing with a difficult resource, my hard drive crashed, so getting back on track was a process, and I didn’t edit this one very well)
Again, this was a difficult resource for me. I have a rudimentary and incomplete understanding of corporate regulation and accountability, so considerable backtracking would need to occur in order for me to fully understand what overhauling or changing that regulation involves. I feel like I hardly have enough time for forward tracking, let alone backtracking, so I’m left with more questions than answers.
Through discussion with Smart People, several aspects of material in prior resources was reexamined, giving me a better understanding of what this resource is about. Most importantly was a key characteristic of the codes, standards, and frameworks discussed in my post of that title. All (or at least most) are voluntary, and were developed by corporations themselves. Self-awareness by/of corporations is important, but this creates a distinct conflict of interest for them. When the Founding Fathers drafted the Constitution, they recognized the difficulty in objectively regulating oneself and wrote a system of governance that featured checks and balances to keep the different branches of government honest and to prevent any one of them from acquiring too much power. It is the inability of corporations to objectively self-regulate in the best interests of everybody that creates problems. To whom are corporations responsible and accountable? If they answer only to shareholders, their priority will be maximizing profit. It seems this is the way things have been historically. An effect of this is making pollution control, emission control, efficient use of raw materials, etc. a lower priority. If it becomes more profitable to flush your garbage rather than recycling or repurposing it, we end up with sick ecosystems, the effects of which we’re now recognizing.
If, on the other hand, a corporation tries to balance profit with environmental stewardship and socially just business practices, it will not be as profitable in the short term. In Business-As-Usual, where emphasis is placed on the numbers for next quarter rather than next century, this puts that corporation at a disadvantage, making it vulnerable. It’s easy to see why, in our myopic society, the sustainable corporation is a new concept. In fact, this tension between profitability and corporate social responsibility is mentioned in Rethinking Business Regulation.
The next issue I see, related to the first, is the motivation for a corporation to voluntarily comply. In Rethinking Business Regulation, the author identifies several stages of self-regulation. It seems the corporations with which I’m familiar are in the “defensive” or “compliant” stages, in which they either deny they are part of the problem or adopt a policy but treat compliance as added cost. At that stage, there is little motivation to comply. In fact, compliance could be seen as a competitive disadvantage, and the corporation may be criticized by shareholders. As I see it, this is the role of marketing. I’ve seen examples of sustainable business practices being profitable, and those profitable companies have remained so without using their sustainable practices as a marketing tool, possibly because we’re not accustomed to sustainability (as I use the term in this blog) being a competitive advantage.
This is stupid, but in the interest of time, I’m going to wait to expand on that. What it does present is the opportunity to discuss how hardening regulation could help the corporation. Let’s start with an experiment you’ve already conducted. Walk down the cereal isle in your local grocery store. What proportion of the boxes make some statement using the label “natural”? Now, compare the ingredients of those to each other and to the cereals that are “unnatural”. Differences? It’s been a while since I’ve done this, but if memory serves, you will find unpronounceable ingredients on the boxes labeled “natural”. How can this be? The term “natural” is not regulated. There are no standards that must be met in order to put it on your packaging. As such, it is meaningless. After all, there’s no shortage of naturally occurring yet really nasty compounds.
“Organic” on the other hand is regulated, and the government has set standards that must be met in order for a product to be labeled as such. No matter the product, from soda pop to rolled oats, if it says organic, the ingredients will not have used synthetic fertilizers or pesticides. This is a good thing for consumer and grower alike, as it gives us information about our purchases and a powerful marketing tool for the grower.
This is why corporation could/will benefit from hardening this regulation. It will give them meaningful information that can be used to market their products.
The final thing I’d like to mention are the thoughts that run through my head when pondering business regulation. As I’ve mentioned in the past, my parents are republican in the traditional, small government interpretation of the word. Mom counts Ayn Rand as a formative influence and has voted Libertarian many times. Dad is a small business owner. They’ve had an undeniable influence on my political beliefs. When I read about regulation, it is them I hear, whispering about the inefficiencies of bureaucracies and the pitfalls of unintended consequences, and who can argue they’re wrong? There is a fear that regulation is a trammel, and if our business and industry are trammeled and others’ are not, we will be out-competed, and we will fail. Again, this is a logical, if not appropriate, concern, but it does not take into account the ability of our businesses, industries, and economy to adapt. Agriculture in the U.S. used to be based in large part on slave labor. That system was shown to be unsustainable and the government regulated it. Industry here and abroad used to depend on child labor. That system also was shown to be unsustainable, and it was regulated. Industry adapted. These are examples which the wisdom of time has made obviously unsustainable, but the Civil War shows it was not always so obvious, and a great many people couldn’t conceive of an economy without it. The transition to sustainable business will not be easy, smooth, or straightforward. There will be many setbacks and ample opportunity to question our motivation and efficacy, but I absolutely believe there will come a time when we look back on many of our current business practices with the same disbelief with which we view slavery and child labor.
A Little Synthesis
We are roughly halfway through this semester, and I find myself searching for some kind of unifying theme in everything we’ve read. I’m trying to go deeper than the obvious “lots of things are wrong and we ignore them at our peril.” Without question, the latter is true, but I think we’re striving for a deeper understanding. After all, we students are going to end up with more letters after our names when this is all said and done.
The problem with synthesis is, in order to form a cohesive statement about whatever, you must simplify, often to the point of losing any kind of relevance. Such is the case with the above statement. It’s a message we’ve heard many times and while accurate, doesn’t hint at the underlying complexity of the issues with which we’re faced. I’ll concede that limitation and still try for something simple and meaningful.
I was tempted by an obvious one: We (I’m still not sure how wide a net I’m casting with “we”), mostly, are not stupid, lazy, inconsiderate, or greedy, but we are shortsighted. Just like everything we depend on can be traced back to the natural world, so too can all of the issues we’re facing today be traced back to this characteristic. Myopia may not be the primary cause of every issue we tackle in this class, but it contributes to and/or exacerbates them all, from ecosystem degradation to financial fraud.
This is OK, if not true and accurate. The bigger and more important consideration is where this myopia comes from. The what matters little without understanding the why. Again, I don’t have the answer, and I suspect if it’s my intention to find it, I could spend the rest of my life doing so. Even if the above is OK, I still wasn’t satisfied.
As I’ve mentioned many times, the outdoor retail sector has some outstanding examples of companies that are doing well with sustainable business practices. The more I learned about these companies, the more I wondered what made them different, i.e. why weren’t all businesses like them? I chalked this reaction up to a lot of things, but mostly to naiveté. While not a total novice, until this degree, my business education was limited and informal. I expected this degree to give me better insight into why those companies were unusual.
This has not happened.
For me, this is a more satisfying theme tying together everything we’ve covered so far. I still cannot figure out why sustainable business and business as usual are not synonymous. It’s not that what we’re reading is obvious, although some of it is. It’s not that it’s more or less complicated. It is both. It’s not that it’s easier or more difficult. Again, it will be both. It is that it makes so much sense, on every level that matters.
The problem with synthesis is, in order to form a cohesive statement about whatever, you must simplify, often to the point of losing any kind of relevance. Such is the case with the above statement. It’s a message we’ve heard many times and while accurate, doesn’t hint at the underlying complexity of the issues with which we’re faced. I’ll concede that limitation and still try for something simple and meaningful.
I was tempted by an obvious one: We (I’m still not sure how wide a net I’m casting with “we”), mostly, are not stupid, lazy, inconsiderate, or greedy, but we are shortsighted. Just like everything we depend on can be traced back to the natural world, so too can all of the issues we’re facing today be traced back to this characteristic. Myopia may not be the primary cause of every issue we tackle in this class, but it contributes to and/or exacerbates them all, from ecosystem degradation to financial fraud.
This is OK, if not true and accurate. The bigger and more important consideration is where this myopia comes from. The what matters little without understanding the why. Again, I don’t have the answer, and I suspect if it’s my intention to find it, I could spend the rest of my life doing so. Even if the above is OK, I still wasn’t satisfied.
As I’ve mentioned many times, the outdoor retail sector has some outstanding examples of companies that are doing well with sustainable business practices. The more I learned about these companies, the more I wondered what made them different, i.e. why weren’t all businesses like them? I chalked this reaction up to a lot of things, but mostly to naiveté. While not a total novice, until this degree, my business education was limited and informal. I expected this degree to give me better insight into why those companies were unusual.
This has not happened.
For me, this is a more satisfying theme tying together everything we’ve covered so far. I still cannot figure out why sustainable business and business as usual are not synonymous. It’s not that what we’re reading is obvious, although some of it is. It’s not that it’s more or less complicated. It is both. It’s not that it’s easier or more difficult. Again, it will be both. It is that it makes so much sense, on every level that matters.
Monday, March 22, 2010
The Corporate Ecosystem Services Review
By World Resources Institute, World Business Council for Sustainable Development, Meridian Institute
“Unfortunately, companies often fail to make the connection between the health of ecosystems and the business bottom line.” (pg. iv)
Historically, we Americans have been good at recognizing and appreciating the non-business value of healthy ecosystems. We have a wonderful natural park system that includes some of the most beautiful physical beauty in the universe. Millions of people visit those places annually to stand in humble awe. Then, most of those millions get back in their automobiles, turn off the part of their brain that was awed, and drive back to the office to get back to work, never making the connection between that which awed them and that which they wanted to get away from. The Corporate Ecosystem Services Review (CESR) is an attempt to make that connection.
In my organizational behavior class, we spent a lot of time on decision-making and the potential pitfalls that can lead to poor decisions. One of those is the framing trap, in which prior experience or some other stimulus prevents the decision-maker from objectively evaluating the options, leading him or her to choose poorly. The above scenario is reflective of how we frame this issue, how that inaccurate frame has lead to sick ecosystems, and is what I consider the CESR’s strength.
The framing trap we fall into is disconnecting the natural from the industrial and business related. We set aside our beautiful ecosystems and protect them, and once that line is drawn, what falls outside it is ours to exploit and what’s inside it is ours to appreciate on the weekend road trip. What we’ve failed to recognize is that those lines are arbitrary, and natural systems don’t respect them. Furthermore, once that line is drawn, what’s inside it ceases to serve a purpose other than providing us with a nice background for photo ops. This is not meant as criticism of the weekend road tripper or our national park system, but as an explanation of how a skewed frame has kept us from accurately accounting for the services healthy ecosystems provide.
So, the first step is to frame the issue in terms with which we’re comfortable and familiar (read “dollars”). Americans understand and appreciate money. Put a dollar sign on it, and we’ll pay attention to the numbers next to it. We’ll notice when the price goes down; even more when the price goes up. This, I think, is what the CESR does right. Protecting ecosystems won’t be a priority until we can show corporations that doing so makes financial sense.
Beyond this argument, that neglecting ecosystems is going to cost us more than protecting them, the CESR includes the hows of accurately accounting for those services. Despite my best efforts, I have no criticism of what they say. As with other resources we’ve looked at, I’m sure issues would arise when putting the CESR into practice, and some trial and error would be necessary to adapt it to a given organization, but that’s to be expected.
“Unfortunately, companies often fail to make the connection between the health of ecosystems and the business bottom line.” (pg. iv)
Historically, we Americans have been good at recognizing and appreciating the non-business value of healthy ecosystems. We have a wonderful natural park system that includes some of the most beautiful physical beauty in the universe. Millions of people visit those places annually to stand in humble awe. Then, most of those millions get back in their automobiles, turn off the part of their brain that was awed, and drive back to the office to get back to work, never making the connection between that which awed them and that which they wanted to get away from. The Corporate Ecosystem Services Review (CESR) is an attempt to make that connection.
In my organizational behavior class, we spent a lot of time on decision-making and the potential pitfalls that can lead to poor decisions. One of those is the framing trap, in which prior experience or some other stimulus prevents the decision-maker from objectively evaluating the options, leading him or her to choose poorly. The above scenario is reflective of how we frame this issue, how that inaccurate frame has lead to sick ecosystems, and is what I consider the CESR’s strength.
The framing trap we fall into is disconnecting the natural from the industrial and business related. We set aside our beautiful ecosystems and protect them, and once that line is drawn, what falls outside it is ours to exploit and what’s inside it is ours to appreciate on the weekend road trip. What we’ve failed to recognize is that those lines are arbitrary, and natural systems don’t respect them. Furthermore, once that line is drawn, what’s inside it ceases to serve a purpose other than providing us with a nice background for photo ops. This is not meant as criticism of the weekend road tripper or our national park system, but as an explanation of how a skewed frame has kept us from accurately accounting for the services healthy ecosystems provide.
So, the first step is to frame the issue in terms with which we’re comfortable and familiar (read “dollars”). Americans understand and appreciate money. Put a dollar sign on it, and we’ll pay attention to the numbers next to it. We’ll notice when the price goes down; even more when the price goes up. This, I think, is what the CESR does right. Protecting ecosystems won’t be a priority until we can show corporations that doing so makes financial sense.
Beyond this argument, that neglecting ecosystems is going to cost us more than protecting them, the CESR includes the hows of accurately accounting for those services. Despite my best efforts, I have no criticism of what they say. As with other resources we’ve looked at, I’m sure issues would arise when putting the CESR into practice, and some trial and error would be necessary to adapt it to a given organization, but that’s to be expected.
Wednesday, March 17, 2010
More on Stuff
A friend posted this on Facebook, where it seems all pertinent information is now found. I haven't had a chance to get too in depth, but Ms. Leonard seems to be talking about an issue at the heart of sustainability, especially for Americans. I'm trying to not feel like a hypocrite while typing on my fancy computer.
The Story of Stuff
Enjoy!
The Story of Stuff
Enjoy!
Tuesday, March 9, 2010
Corporate Responsibility, Good Governance, and Scalable Solutions
Source: Gearing Up: From Corporate Responsibility to Good Governance and Scalable Solutions
By SustainAbility Ltd. 2004
Synopsis:
Corporate responsibility (CR): A term that can embrace financial integrity, corporate ethics and dimensions of economic, social and environmental value added. In the wake of such scandals as the Enron collapse, the term has often focused back on narrower definitions of financial integrity. However, throughout Gearing Up, we use CR to refer to a business approach embodying open and transparent business practices, ethical behavior, respect for stakeholders and a commitment to add economic, social and environmental value.
Gearing Up explores the relationship between corporations, corporate responsibility and governance. Ultimately, the question it seeks to answer is, through which system(s) will change be most effective?
Reflection:
I struggled with this resource until I reached the section on scalable solutions. Until that point, my biggest question was whether or not this was a subject that needed exploration. My understanding of the relationship between business and government is that business offers a society the goods and/or services demanded/needed/wanted by that society and government does its best to keep an eye on those operations to prevent them from doing more harm than good. Admittedly simplistic, but it explains my incredulity. From an environmental and social perspective, the changes demanded by sustainable development will unquestionably benefit more people than Business As Usual, so what incentive would government have in regulating developing practices that are already ahead of the curve? For example, without a lot of effort, I can think of a dozen businesses, mostly in the outdoor retail field, that practice sustainable business. They use less energy, less water, fewer raw materials, produce fewer emissions and less pollution. Their only criticism, and this is by no means conclusive, is that, in the short term, they are less profitable than Business As Usual, as most of the efforts that result in the aforementioned cost more. So again, what incentive would government have to interfere with what is already a good system?
When I got to the section on scalability, I made the connection. The businesses I might cite are small. As far as I know, none of them are publicly owned. There are no shareholder meetings, no quarterly meetings with mandates to hit your number no matter what, etc. I doubt any of the owners/CEOs have seen Glengary Glen Ross, and if they have, I doubt they abide by Blake’s ABCs. Unfortunately, Business As Usual is where we’re at, and it’s where change needs to take place, and a lot of the men and women making their living with Business As Usual would get along just fine with Blake.
So, the implication I drew is that the role of government is to aid us in getting from Business As Usual to sustainable business. Hmmmmm… Business As Usual and government regulation mix like oil and water. Forgive me for being skeptical that government regulation of Business As Usual will lead to change on the scale needed.
There was no regulation required to get us to Business As Usual. Growth was/is the natural/logical direction for business. It is a question of motivation. Most corporations on the scale of Business As Usual are not intrinsically motivated. They exist for profit. Therefore, there are two potential paths through which change might occur. One, if sustainable business practices can be proven as profitable as or more profitable than Business As Usual, we have nothing to worry about. We’ll be working with the same motivation that got us where we are, and government will have little reason to get involved. Of course, when we’re talking about profit, we’re talking about cost, and one of the bricks in the foundation upon which Business As Usual was built is incomplete accounting of costs. Most of our products are produced overseas by inexpensive labor, under governments that may be less likely to embrace strict environmental and social standards. Those costs will catch up to us, but it seems the prevailing wisdom is to ride that wave as long as possible. So government may function to more accurately account for costs through regulations and subsidies. My worry with that is the potential for unintended consequences. I cite the subsidization of corn and our current food system.
Path two is to hope that Business As Usual starts recognizing that the current system is not sustainable and starts making changes to get in line with that standard. I guess it’s not a stretch to put that in terms of profit, but only on a timescale longer than that which most corporations pay attention to. This is the role I see for the smaller companies like those I might have cited above. If their efforts prove profitable, and can be scaled up to the level of Business As Usual (or, if that level is not sustainable, a reasonable level, whatever reasonable means), then we’ll be on the right track.
By SustainAbility Ltd. 2004
Synopsis:
Corporate responsibility (CR): A term that can embrace financial integrity, corporate ethics and dimensions of economic, social and environmental value added. In the wake of such scandals as the Enron collapse, the term has often focused back on narrower definitions of financial integrity. However, throughout Gearing Up, we use CR to refer to a business approach embodying open and transparent business practices, ethical behavior, respect for stakeholders and a commitment to add economic, social and environmental value.
Gearing Up explores the relationship between corporations, corporate responsibility and governance. Ultimately, the question it seeks to answer is, through which system(s) will change be most effective?
Reflection:
I struggled with this resource until I reached the section on scalable solutions. Until that point, my biggest question was whether or not this was a subject that needed exploration. My understanding of the relationship between business and government is that business offers a society the goods and/or services demanded/needed/wanted by that society and government does its best to keep an eye on those operations to prevent them from doing more harm than good. Admittedly simplistic, but it explains my incredulity. From an environmental and social perspective, the changes demanded by sustainable development will unquestionably benefit more people than Business As Usual, so what incentive would government have in regulating developing practices that are already ahead of the curve? For example, without a lot of effort, I can think of a dozen businesses, mostly in the outdoor retail field, that practice sustainable business. They use less energy, less water, fewer raw materials, produce fewer emissions and less pollution. Their only criticism, and this is by no means conclusive, is that, in the short term, they are less profitable than Business As Usual, as most of the efforts that result in the aforementioned cost more. So again, what incentive would government have to interfere with what is already a good system?
When I got to the section on scalability, I made the connection. The businesses I might cite are small. As far as I know, none of them are publicly owned. There are no shareholder meetings, no quarterly meetings with mandates to hit your number no matter what, etc. I doubt any of the owners/CEOs have seen Glengary Glen Ross, and if they have, I doubt they abide by Blake’s ABCs. Unfortunately, Business As Usual is where we’re at, and it’s where change needs to take place, and a lot of the men and women making their living with Business As Usual would get along just fine with Blake.
So, the implication I drew is that the role of government is to aid us in getting from Business As Usual to sustainable business. Hmmmmm… Business As Usual and government regulation mix like oil and water. Forgive me for being skeptical that government regulation of Business As Usual will lead to change on the scale needed.
There was no regulation required to get us to Business As Usual. Growth was/is the natural/logical direction for business. It is a question of motivation. Most corporations on the scale of Business As Usual are not intrinsically motivated. They exist for profit. Therefore, there are two potential paths through which change might occur. One, if sustainable business practices can be proven as profitable as or more profitable than Business As Usual, we have nothing to worry about. We’ll be working with the same motivation that got us where we are, and government will have little reason to get involved. Of course, when we’re talking about profit, we’re talking about cost, and one of the bricks in the foundation upon which Business As Usual was built is incomplete accounting of costs. Most of our products are produced overseas by inexpensive labor, under governments that may be less likely to embrace strict environmental and social standards. Those costs will catch up to us, but it seems the prevailing wisdom is to ride that wave as long as possible. So government may function to more accurately account for costs through regulations and subsidies. My worry with that is the potential for unintended consequences. I cite the subsidization of corn and our current food system.
Path two is to hope that Business As Usual starts recognizing that the current system is not sustainable and starts making changes to get in line with that standard. I guess it’s not a stretch to put that in terms of profit, but only on a timescale longer than that which most corporations pay attention to. This is the role I see for the smaller companies like those I might have cited above. If their efforts prove profitable, and can be scaled up to the level of Business As Usual (or, if that level is not sustainable, a reasonable level, whatever reasonable means), then we’ll be on the right track.
Monday, March 8, 2010
Recycled Markets
Source: Developing Markets for Recyclable Materials: Policy and Program Options
Prepared by Mt. Auburn Associates, Inc. and Northeast-Midwest Institute for U.S. E.P.A. 1993
Synopsis: For recycling to be effective, it must provide a consistent material that can be utilized by manufacturers, and manufacturers must provide a steady market for those materials. This source explores how that market can and has broken down in the past and offers recommendations for addressing those problems.
Reflection:
Recycling must be one of the most misunderstood programs connected to conservation and sustainability efforts. Even those who are stalwart recyclers probably don’t understand what happens to their #2 plastic once they dump it into the recycling bin. What is most easily understood about recycling is putting an item into one bin rather than the garbage. It isn’t a process that encourages deep thought. This is not a good thing.
The fact is, in order to get as much from recycling as possible, it does require some deeper thinking and analysis. For example, what is the difference between a #2 and a #3 plastic? The law of averages says recyclers are not chemical engineers, so the average recycler isn’t going to know that #2 is high density polyethylene and #3 is polyvinyl chloride and that those have fundamental differences in composition, so they will need to be processed differently and must be separated at some point if a usable end product is desired. We know there is an inverse correlation between participation in recycling programs and the amount of thought and/or effort required for a given recycling program. Single sort recycling is much lauded, but it’s also much more expensive. Equating time with money, we’ve just moved the expense from the homeowner to the recycling center in order to get better participation. Furthermore, how many of us recognize that the goal of recycling isn’t just to keep waste out of a landfill, but to provide a material that can be remanufactured? We see one bin, and we see the garbage can, and we feel good putting stuff into the former. End of thought process. In a perfect world, one in which people had both the time and inclination to get into recycling, we’d have recycling bins for each kind of plastic, metal, glass color, and all the separation would take place in the home and each of those materials would enter a processing stream that is as smooth as possible. In this world, participation in such a recycling program would be low.
We need to close the loop. Regarding raw materials, we’re already beyond the carrying capacity of this planet, but somewhere we forgot that materials don’t have to be raw. In addition to maintaining this blog, the other requirement for this class is reading a book from a list of approved titles. I selected Cradle to Cradle, by McDonough and Braunart. I haven’t made enough progress therein to get any more insight from that resource other than this is exactly the subject of that book, taken to the next level. In Cradle to Cradle, the authors argue that, rather than making stuff, using stuff, producing waste, and then staring at that waste wondering what to do with it, we can begin at the other end of the process and design stuff such that we already know what can be done with it when it’s used up, closing the loop. Cradle to Cradle represents a level of thinking to which we’re still aspiring. Recycling represents a level of thinking that is going to help us bridge the gap from where we are now to that level.
As an aside, I’d also like to mention another title tangentially related to recycling and reusing, Mongo: Adventures in Trash, by Ted Botha. In that book, Botha explores the subculture of dumpster diving, exploring the people who in some way make their living off the waste of others, from so-called “freegans,” who eat nothing but the perfectly good food deemed garbage by expiration dates, to antique collectors/sellers. My enduring understanding from that book was astonishment that I lived in a society that produced so much waste there was an entire subculture that revolved around it. Again, with a slight change in thinking and some innovation, waste becomes raw material, and we transform from a disgustingly wasteful society to one rich in those raw materials.
And, after some more reflection time and a couple of proof-reads, I realized I’ve strayed a little from our point. What does recycling have to do with sustainable business practices? First, in many of our resources, we’re told it can be most effective to go for the “low-hanging fruit” first. Because recycling is relatively mainstream, it’s likely that improving the recycling efforts of an organization will be relatively easy. Second, it’s possible that such efforts in the workplace will spill over into the homes of employees. In many cases, there is a threshold of effort that needs to be overcome in order for habits to change. When an employee sees how easily many things are recycled, it might be enough to overcome that threshold. Finally, if we do approach recycling as a way of producing raw materials, it’s conceivable it could become a source of income for a business. In our old bike shop, we separated our aluminum scrap because it was one of the few scrap metals that collectors were still paying for (although that’s changed). It wasn’t much, but it paid for a few cups of coffee or a round at the bar after quitting time. That counts.
Prepared by Mt. Auburn Associates, Inc. and Northeast-Midwest Institute for U.S. E.P.A. 1993
Synopsis: For recycling to be effective, it must provide a consistent material that can be utilized by manufacturers, and manufacturers must provide a steady market for those materials. This source explores how that market can and has broken down in the past and offers recommendations for addressing those problems.
Reflection:
Recycling must be one of the most misunderstood programs connected to conservation and sustainability efforts. Even those who are stalwart recyclers probably don’t understand what happens to their #2 plastic once they dump it into the recycling bin. What is most easily understood about recycling is putting an item into one bin rather than the garbage. It isn’t a process that encourages deep thought. This is not a good thing.
The fact is, in order to get as much from recycling as possible, it does require some deeper thinking and analysis. For example, what is the difference between a #2 and a #3 plastic? The law of averages says recyclers are not chemical engineers, so the average recycler isn’t going to know that #2 is high density polyethylene and #3 is polyvinyl chloride and that those have fundamental differences in composition, so they will need to be processed differently and must be separated at some point if a usable end product is desired. We know there is an inverse correlation between participation in recycling programs and the amount of thought and/or effort required for a given recycling program. Single sort recycling is much lauded, but it’s also much more expensive. Equating time with money, we’ve just moved the expense from the homeowner to the recycling center in order to get better participation. Furthermore, how many of us recognize that the goal of recycling isn’t just to keep waste out of a landfill, but to provide a material that can be remanufactured? We see one bin, and we see the garbage can, and we feel good putting stuff into the former. End of thought process. In a perfect world, one in which people had both the time and inclination to get into recycling, we’d have recycling bins for each kind of plastic, metal, glass color, and all the separation would take place in the home and each of those materials would enter a processing stream that is as smooth as possible. In this world, participation in such a recycling program would be low.
We need to close the loop. Regarding raw materials, we’re already beyond the carrying capacity of this planet, but somewhere we forgot that materials don’t have to be raw. In addition to maintaining this blog, the other requirement for this class is reading a book from a list of approved titles. I selected Cradle to Cradle, by McDonough and Braunart. I haven’t made enough progress therein to get any more insight from that resource other than this is exactly the subject of that book, taken to the next level. In Cradle to Cradle, the authors argue that, rather than making stuff, using stuff, producing waste, and then staring at that waste wondering what to do with it, we can begin at the other end of the process and design stuff such that we already know what can be done with it when it’s used up, closing the loop. Cradle to Cradle represents a level of thinking to which we’re still aspiring. Recycling represents a level of thinking that is going to help us bridge the gap from where we are now to that level.
As an aside, I’d also like to mention another title tangentially related to recycling and reusing, Mongo: Adventures in Trash, by Ted Botha. In that book, Botha explores the subculture of dumpster diving, exploring the people who in some way make their living off the waste of others, from so-called “freegans,” who eat nothing but the perfectly good food deemed garbage by expiration dates, to antique collectors/sellers. My enduring understanding from that book was astonishment that I lived in a society that produced so much waste there was an entire subculture that revolved around it. Again, with a slight change in thinking and some innovation, waste becomes raw material, and we transform from a disgustingly wasteful society to one rich in those raw materials.
And, after some more reflection time and a couple of proof-reads, I realized I’ve strayed a little from our point. What does recycling have to do with sustainable business practices? First, in many of our resources, we’re told it can be most effective to go for the “low-hanging fruit” first. Because recycling is relatively mainstream, it’s likely that improving the recycling efforts of an organization will be relatively easy. Second, it’s possible that such efforts in the workplace will spill over into the homes of employees. In many cases, there is a threshold of effort that needs to be overcome in order for habits to change. When an employee sees how easily many things are recycled, it might be enough to overcome that threshold. Finally, if we do approach recycling as a way of producing raw materials, it’s conceivable it could become a source of income for a business. In our old bike shop, we separated our aluminum scrap because it was one of the few scrap metals that collectors were still paying for (although that’s changed). It wasn’t much, but it paid for a few cups of coffee or a round at the bar after quitting time. That counts.
Friday, March 5, 2010
Corporate Carbon Neutrality
Source: Getting to Zero: Defining Corporate Carbon Neutrality
By Clean Air Cool Planet and Forum for the Future, 2008
Synopsis:
Definition: True corporate carbon neutrality means there is no net increase of atmospheric greenhouse gases from the existence of the company – or from a clearly-defined part of the company that accounts for a significant portion of the company’s overall climate impact. If a company makes a claim regarding a specific product, then there should be no net increase of atmospheric greenhouse gases from the existence of that product.
This document discusses the above definition and how it can be and has been interpreted (especially the first word) in the corporate world.
Reflection:
The first, and maybe most obvious, thoughts regarding this document were: “carbon neutral” is straightforward, so why an entire document fleshing out that definition, and, is carbon neutrality really necessary? I’ll deal with these in order.
Immediately upon asking the former, I realized how naïve it is. In a world where we’ve seen the definition of “is” come under scrutiny, when the tenets of capitalism compel corporations to seek any and all advantage over their competition, it should come as no surprise that a concept as complex as carbon neutrality has been interpreted differently. There are several facets of this interpretation that are important.
The first is related to the carbon cycle itself. Economic activity produces carbon, usually as CO2 emissions. The natural world takes up that carbon, usually through photosynthesis. That means carbon neutrality could be approached from one end or the other or both. Getting to Zero does a good job of recognizing this, admitting that a corporation could get to carbon neutrality by doing nothing other than purchasing carbon offsets. As they point out, this follows the letter of the law, but not the spirit. Also, there are not enough offsets (I use that term as if I understand it, but I don’t) to cover all the world’s emissions, so on a global scale, reducing them is necessary. The analogy I drew deals with automobiles. You can reduce the amount of gas you use by driving less (reducing emissions), driving a vehicle that gets better mileage (buying carbon offsets), or both. Even if everybody in the world drove a Prius, there’s not enough gas to go around. Eventually, we’re going to need to drive less. That said, purchasing carbon offsets and hybrid vehicles will be necessary Band-Aids until deeper, longer-lasting solutions become reality, and I’m OK with that.
The second aspect of interpretation, and the one most fascinating to me, deals with the question of boundaries, i.e. what parts of your business are you going to include in your claims of neutrality? If you define a narrow boundary, it is easier to get to and claim carbon neutrality. For example, Dell computers has aspirations of carbon neutrality. If they define their boundary to include only emissions from the manufacturing process, achieving neutrality will be easier than if they choose to include emissions from the use of their product. This brings up all kinds of interesting philosophical questions, and provides an opportunity to really slide down the rabbit hole. Clearly, if Dell wants to achieve true carbon neutrality, they must assume responsibility for some of the emissions produced using their product (assuming this responsibility would also create an incentive to make more efficient machines), but the consumer and end-user must share that responsibility. We know there has to be a line drawn somewhere, but where? In a perfect world, both parties would approach the situation logically and assume responsibility for just a little bit more than needed, but that’s not going to happen, especially if carbon neutrality becomes mandatory, and ESPECIALLY not if we start quantifying carbon neutrality monetarily.
The latter brings up another interesting point. Right now, carbon neutrality is voluntary. We assume businesses recognize the marketing potential behind a claim of neutrality, and some of the more foresighted ones may recognize the possibility of a carbon market in the future, when neutrality will be synonymous with fiscal responsibility, and there are probably a few out there that are pursuing carbon neutrality because it is the “right” thing to do, but the cynic in me doesn’t see this occurring on a large scale until it is mandatory. Uh oh. I can just picture the set in my father’s jaw if I were to tell him I thought regulating carbon emissions should be mandatory for companies. That said, he’s a smart guy, and widespread regulation would undoubtedly affect our economy, but I question the notion that it would be disastrous. I’ve mentioned before our love of and talent for innovation, and figuring out how to manufacture the same widget we’ve come to know and love while reducing emissions seems like a worthy cause. Well, worthy or not, it’s got to be done. Perhaps the more important question is, if carbon neutrality is mandated, what is going to happen to the credibility of claims of neutrality? We know there are companies out there that would take shortcuts, cheat, and lie in order to avoid penalties for non-compliance. Such behavior would taint the entire process and call into question all claims of neutrality.
Conclusions? I don’t think voluntary movement toward carbon neutrality will be widespread enough. Therefore, it will need to be mandatory. Such regulation will be fought bitterly by Business As Usual. I don’t know what happens at that point, but the outcome is always the same. We can get it now, or we can get it when conditions have started affecting our quality of life.
By Clean Air Cool Planet and Forum for the Future, 2008
Synopsis:
Definition: True corporate carbon neutrality means there is no net increase of atmospheric greenhouse gases from the existence of the company – or from a clearly-defined part of the company that accounts for a significant portion of the company’s overall climate impact. If a company makes a claim regarding a specific product, then there should be no net increase of atmospheric greenhouse gases from the existence of that product.
This document discusses the above definition and how it can be and has been interpreted (especially the first word) in the corporate world.
Reflection:
The first, and maybe most obvious, thoughts regarding this document were: “carbon neutral” is straightforward, so why an entire document fleshing out that definition, and, is carbon neutrality really necessary? I’ll deal with these in order.
Immediately upon asking the former, I realized how naïve it is. In a world where we’ve seen the definition of “is” come under scrutiny, when the tenets of capitalism compel corporations to seek any and all advantage over their competition, it should come as no surprise that a concept as complex as carbon neutrality has been interpreted differently. There are several facets of this interpretation that are important.
The first is related to the carbon cycle itself. Economic activity produces carbon, usually as CO2 emissions. The natural world takes up that carbon, usually through photosynthesis. That means carbon neutrality could be approached from one end or the other or both. Getting to Zero does a good job of recognizing this, admitting that a corporation could get to carbon neutrality by doing nothing other than purchasing carbon offsets. As they point out, this follows the letter of the law, but not the spirit. Also, there are not enough offsets (I use that term as if I understand it, but I don’t) to cover all the world’s emissions, so on a global scale, reducing them is necessary. The analogy I drew deals with automobiles. You can reduce the amount of gas you use by driving less (reducing emissions), driving a vehicle that gets better mileage (buying carbon offsets), or both. Even if everybody in the world drove a Prius, there’s not enough gas to go around. Eventually, we’re going to need to drive less. That said, purchasing carbon offsets and hybrid vehicles will be necessary Band-Aids until deeper, longer-lasting solutions become reality, and I’m OK with that.
The second aspect of interpretation, and the one most fascinating to me, deals with the question of boundaries, i.e. what parts of your business are you going to include in your claims of neutrality? If you define a narrow boundary, it is easier to get to and claim carbon neutrality. For example, Dell computers has aspirations of carbon neutrality. If they define their boundary to include only emissions from the manufacturing process, achieving neutrality will be easier than if they choose to include emissions from the use of their product. This brings up all kinds of interesting philosophical questions, and provides an opportunity to really slide down the rabbit hole. Clearly, if Dell wants to achieve true carbon neutrality, they must assume responsibility for some of the emissions produced using their product (assuming this responsibility would also create an incentive to make more efficient machines), but the consumer and end-user must share that responsibility. We know there has to be a line drawn somewhere, but where? In a perfect world, both parties would approach the situation logically and assume responsibility for just a little bit more than needed, but that’s not going to happen, especially if carbon neutrality becomes mandatory, and ESPECIALLY not if we start quantifying carbon neutrality monetarily.
The latter brings up another interesting point. Right now, carbon neutrality is voluntary. We assume businesses recognize the marketing potential behind a claim of neutrality, and some of the more foresighted ones may recognize the possibility of a carbon market in the future, when neutrality will be synonymous with fiscal responsibility, and there are probably a few out there that are pursuing carbon neutrality because it is the “right” thing to do, but the cynic in me doesn’t see this occurring on a large scale until it is mandatory. Uh oh. I can just picture the set in my father’s jaw if I were to tell him I thought regulating carbon emissions should be mandatory for companies. That said, he’s a smart guy, and widespread regulation would undoubtedly affect our economy, but I question the notion that it would be disastrous. I’ve mentioned before our love of and talent for innovation, and figuring out how to manufacture the same widget we’ve come to know and love while reducing emissions seems like a worthy cause. Well, worthy or not, it’s got to be done. Perhaps the more important question is, if carbon neutrality is mandated, what is going to happen to the credibility of claims of neutrality? We know there are companies out there that would take shortcuts, cheat, and lie in order to avoid penalties for non-compliance. Such behavior would taint the entire process and call into question all claims of neutrality.
Conclusions? I don’t think voluntary movement toward carbon neutrality will be widespread enough. Therefore, it will need to be mandatory. Such regulation will be fought bitterly by Business As Usual. I don’t know what happens at that point, but the outcome is always the same. We can get it now, or we can get it when conditions have started affecting our quality of life.
Tuesday, March 2, 2010
Greenhouse Gas Management
By Putt Del Pino, Levinson and Larsen; World Resources Institute; 2006
Synopsis: Accepting that anthropogenic climate change is real and is a problem that can be addressed, controlling greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions is the very first and possibly most important step in assuaging the potentially catastrophic consequences. This document lays out the process of doing that, from background on ACC to planning and developing your GHG inventory to tools for managing emissions.
Reflection:
Preface: I’ve been experiencing a great deal of cognitive dissonance re: ACC lately. That experience doesn’t really pertain to this document at the tree level, but it does on a forest level, so I’m bringing it up. Also, it’s been grinding on me and I feel like venting.
As stated in my intro, anthropogenic climate change (ACC) is a foregone conclusion for me. It is not, however, a foregone conclusion for everybody, including some of my family members. I normally don’t have the patience to discuss this issue, but for family, I’ve made an exception, and I find myself paying attention to and investigating some things I normally wouldn’t. This leaves me deeply troubled.
I’m not troubled because it’s possible we’re wrong about ACC. Could there be better news than to hear our current way of life doesn’t have the disastrous consequences some of us think it does? What troubles me is how this attacks my empirical worldview, deeply rooted in the scientific method. In my worldview, we don’t know anything until it’s experimentally verified and replicated. Well, it turns out there is scientific data out there that directly refutes many of the claims made by pro-ACC scientists. Without going to the trouble of reading all the source documents myself, it seems we (superficially?) have equally valid and totally contradictory data; data generated by the rock of my worldview, the scientific method. So we have two or more claims, all based on the scientific method, and not all of them can be right. Any way you cut it, it calls into question the scientific method. So, if the scientific method is fallible, how do I know anything? (Note: In my experience, questions of epistemology are best discussed over a pint of stout. Any takers?)
Coincidentally enough, this morning I listened to a reassuring Science Friday podcast. It seems it is possible the above cognitive dissonance is caused not by a flawed scientific method, but by a flawed system of reporting and/or dissemination of information (admittedly, dissemination of info is part of the scientific method, but not at the level talked about in this podcast). This was reassuring but in little way does it help me find cognitive consonance; as much as I wish otherwise, I don’t have the resources to study the scientific journals myself. So where am I left? I am not religious, but there is wisdom in Pascal’s Wager. We have everything to gain and little to lose if we take action to mitigate ACC. On the other hand, if we choose to not accept ACC, do nothing, and it turns out we were wrong…
On to GHG emission inventory and management. Rather than sharply criticize or glowingly praise this particular resource (it’s not a resource that lends itself to either), I’m going to attempt to inventory my personal GHG emissions in the same way a business or organization might. My reason for doing this is manifold. First, in my daydreams about corporate salvation, I’m often using tools like this. The depth of knowledge gained from reading and taking notes pales in comparison to the depth of knowledge gained by using and doing. Second, as well as I think I live my life, I am not so arrogant as to believe I couldn’t do better. Seems like inventorying my GHG emissions would be a nice step in that direction. Note: I won’t be taking this to the same level as a business would, simply because accuracy takes time I don’t have. This means many steps will be easier and some will be harder. Last, you reading about me managing my GHG emissions is more interesting than reading my notes. You’re welcome.
Step one is easy: assign resources. For a business, that would mean selecting personnel and allotting a budget; for me, it means me. Two, we begin the inventory by establishing its boundaries i.e. what are we going to include in the inventory? For a business, that would mean selecting business units, their activities, and the portion of those activities/emissions for which the business is going to consider itself responsible. For me, it’s me, doing what I do. Next, we categorize our emission-causing activities to decide which will be included in the inventory. This means looking at direct emissions, indirect emissions, and the concept of “scope,” and it’s at this point the process becomes similar for the business and me, so I’ll stop pointing out the differences unless they’re particularly important. The most important of these important differences concerns ownership of the facilities responsible for emissions, and I won’t get into this because it’s boring and I’m not sure I fully understand it.
Personally, Scope 1, direct emissions are simple because I live in a rented apartment in a building that uses centralized, hot water heat. Thus, my only Scope 1 emission is from vehicular travel. Scope 2 would include indirect emissions from the heat and electricity I purchase and consume. There are also Scope 3, indirect emissions that are complicated by leases. I can’t quite decide if the electricity and heat I’m consuming are Scope 2 or Scope 3, but it doesn’t matter as this guide requires me to include both. Last are Scope 3, indirect emissions from sources not owned or controlled by me, third-party production or manufacture of materials and resources used by me, outsourced activities, etc. This guide doesn’t require these emissions be accounted for, but since they’re a large portion of my personal emissions, I will, and you could really go deep here if you wanted. As the guide states, “Scope 3 is a very broad category of emission-causing activities that can cover just about every business or product to which your company is connected, however tangentially.” For my food and daily consumables, do I include the fuel used to transport it from field to market? I eat beef. Do I include bovine flatus? I purchase and ride bikes. Do I include emissions from their production? How about the CO2 I exhale while riding? There is an interesting distinction made in the guide. For some of these categories, whether or not you report them depends on how easily the source of emissions can be quantified and how large its proportion of overall emissions. This isn’t as simplistic as it sounds. It’s a logical assumption that the more difficult a source of emissions is to quantify, and the less obvious it is as a source, the less responsible I am for it.
OK, so in my personal inventory, I’m going to include emissions from personal vehicular transportation and the electricity and heat I purchase and use. On a theoretical level, I think it’s valuable to consider emissions from transport of goods used and waste produced, more so for a business that is consuming many times what I do personally, but these emissions are also going to be relatively less and much more difficult to quantify. I’ll continue to eat local and organic whenever possible, but I’m not going to figure out how much emissions are saved by doing so.
For vehicular travel, quantifying is as simple as looking at receipts for gas purchases for a given length of time. I don’t have my receipts, but I drive two, sometimes three days a week and I estimate I fill my tank twice a month. Ol’ Cleo (that’s my ’97 VW Golf) has, I think, a 13 gallon tank. To be conservative, I’ll estimate I use 30 gallons of gasoline a month, and since I rarely have passengers, all of that is on me. I also estimate I travel by plane once per year, and it would be a simple matter to calculate an average distance per year traveled by plane. To be accurate, I would have to know the make, model, and efficiency of the planes on which I’d traveled, but it could be done.
Heat is more difficult, as my building uses central hot water heat, but a call to the super or management company could probably get me the volume of fuel used and the building’s occupancy, so it’s simple arithmetic to figure out my portion of emissions from heat. Electricity is easy, as I live alone and get a monthly statement that records kilowatt/hours (kWh) used.
OK, we know what we’re paying attention to and how we’re going to measure it. Now we need something to which we can compare, our base year. Some of this selection will depend on availability of data. Since I’ve move around a lot and don’t keep receipts and statements, if I was serious about this, I would probably have to collect data for a year and use that as my base year. Businesses would be better about hanging on to documents, and things have gotten easier with access to online statements and such.
Now we have our data, but it’s not in units that are usable for calculating emissions. I know how much gas I use, but I don’t know how many pounds of CO2 I produced. For that conversion, we use an emission factor and we end up with the following equation: activity data * emission factor = GHG emission. Emission factors are complicated beyond the scope of this little exercise, so I’m not going to go further with them. Suffice it to say they “are published by various entities such as local, state, or national government entities and intergovernmental organizations such as the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), and are frequently updated, so it is important to use the most up-to-date and relevant” (page 38). Armed with activity data and the appropriate emission factors, you can calculate your GHG emissions. Note: there are several calculation tools based on the power of the Excel spreadsheet, and in many cases, will be faster and more convenient to use, but their use should not be mindless. Also, looking at the equations themselves can be a powerful tool in altering behavior. We can directly control only one of those variables: activity data. We can travel fewer miles. We can indirectly control the emission factor by selecting a mode of transportation that has a smaller factor. Those are the only ways to reduce emissions.
The last step is the actual management of emissions, and we start with goal setting, and those goals will depend on the base year. Since I selected what I feel is an “average” year for myself, and since my intent is to decrease my emissions, my goal will be emissions less than my base year. How much less depends on several factors. For a business, it could be dictated by legislation, feasibility, or other reasons I can’t think of right now because I’m completely hopped up on caffeine and low blood sugar. For me personally, I would follow an experimental approach. Let’s say I arbitrarily select 10% reduction. I then find out a 10% reduction is feasible or not, and I can alter future goals to be more realistic. This approach is probably not realistic for a business.
Actual reductions on a personal level are the realm of Oprah and Real Simple magazine: install compact fluorescent lightbulbs, turn down the thermostat, take alternative transportation to work one day a week, etc. There are business analogs to these, and the guide does a good job of covering them. Often this is where we hear talk of “low-hanging fruit.” Reduce emissions through the easiest paths possible to start.
For a business, the final step will likely be reporting all of the above, especially if its goals were set because of regulatory legislation, but also because stakeholders should be interested in efforts like this. My reporting consists of making my friends feel bad by broadcasting at the slightest provocation that I ride my bike to work. I’m a hit at parties.
Synopsis: Accepting that anthropogenic climate change is real and is a problem that can be addressed, controlling greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions is the very first and possibly most important step in assuaging the potentially catastrophic consequences. This document lays out the process of doing that, from background on ACC to planning and developing your GHG inventory to tools for managing emissions.
Reflection:
Preface: I’ve been experiencing a great deal of cognitive dissonance re: ACC lately. That experience doesn’t really pertain to this document at the tree level, but it does on a forest level, so I’m bringing it up. Also, it’s been grinding on me and I feel like venting.
As stated in my intro, anthropogenic climate change (ACC) is a foregone conclusion for me. It is not, however, a foregone conclusion for everybody, including some of my family members. I normally don’t have the patience to discuss this issue, but for family, I’ve made an exception, and I find myself paying attention to and investigating some things I normally wouldn’t. This leaves me deeply troubled.
I’m not troubled because it’s possible we’re wrong about ACC. Could there be better news than to hear our current way of life doesn’t have the disastrous consequences some of us think it does? What troubles me is how this attacks my empirical worldview, deeply rooted in the scientific method. In my worldview, we don’t know anything until it’s experimentally verified and replicated. Well, it turns out there is scientific data out there that directly refutes many of the claims made by pro-ACC scientists. Without going to the trouble of reading all the source documents myself, it seems we (superficially?) have equally valid and totally contradictory data; data generated by the rock of my worldview, the scientific method. So we have two or more claims, all based on the scientific method, and not all of them can be right. Any way you cut it, it calls into question the scientific method. So, if the scientific method is fallible, how do I know anything? (Note: In my experience, questions of epistemology are best discussed over a pint of stout. Any takers?)
Coincidentally enough, this morning I listened to a reassuring Science Friday podcast. It seems it is possible the above cognitive dissonance is caused not by a flawed scientific method, but by a flawed system of reporting and/or dissemination of information (admittedly, dissemination of info is part of the scientific method, but not at the level talked about in this podcast). This was reassuring but in little way does it help me find cognitive consonance; as much as I wish otherwise, I don’t have the resources to study the scientific journals myself. So where am I left? I am not religious, but there is wisdom in Pascal’s Wager. We have everything to gain and little to lose if we take action to mitigate ACC. On the other hand, if we choose to not accept ACC, do nothing, and it turns out we were wrong…
On to GHG emission inventory and management. Rather than sharply criticize or glowingly praise this particular resource (it’s not a resource that lends itself to either), I’m going to attempt to inventory my personal GHG emissions in the same way a business or organization might. My reason for doing this is manifold. First, in my daydreams about corporate salvation, I’m often using tools like this. The depth of knowledge gained from reading and taking notes pales in comparison to the depth of knowledge gained by using and doing. Second, as well as I think I live my life, I am not so arrogant as to believe I couldn’t do better. Seems like inventorying my GHG emissions would be a nice step in that direction. Note: I won’t be taking this to the same level as a business would, simply because accuracy takes time I don’t have. This means many steps will be easier and some will be harder. Last, you reading about me managing my GHG emissions is more interesting than reading my notes. You’re welcome.
Step one is easy: assign resources. For a business, that would mean selecting personnel and allotting a budget; for me, it means me. Two, we begin the inventory by establishing its boundaries i.e. what are we going to include in the inventory? For a business, that would mean selecting business units, their activities, and the portion of those activities/emissions for which the business is going to consider itself responsible. For me, it’s me, doing what I do. Next, we categorize our emission-causing activities to decide which will be included in the inventory. This means looking at direct emissions, indirect emissions, and the concept of “scope,” and it’s at this point the process becomes similar for the business and me, so I’ll stop pointing out the differences unless they’re particularly important. The most important of these important differences concerns ownership of the facilities responsible for emissions, and I won’t get into this because it’s boring and I’m not sure I fully understand it.
Personally, Scope 1, direct emissions are simple because I live in a rented apartment in a building that uses centralized, hot water heat. Thus, my only Scope 1 emission is from vehicular travel. Scope 2 would include indirect emissions from the heat and electricity I purchase and consume. There are also Scope 3, indirect emissions that are complicated by leases. I can’t quite decide if the electricity and heat I’m consuming are Scope 2 or Scope 3, but it doesn’t matter as this guide requires me to include both. Last are Scope 3, indirect emissions from sources not owned or controlled by me, third-party production or manufacture of materials and resources used by me, outsourced activities, etc. This guide doesn’t require these emissions be accounted for, but since they’re a large portion of my personal emissions, I will, and you could really go deep here if you wanted. As the guide states, “Scope 3 is a very broad category of emission-causing activities that can cover just about every business or product to which your company is connected, however tangentially.” For my food and daily consumables, do I include the fuel used to transport it from field to market? I eat beef. Do I include bovine flatus? I purchase and ride bikes. Do I include emissions from their production? How about the CO2 I exhale while riding? There is an interesting distinction made in the guide. For some of these categories, whether or not you report them depends on how easily the source of emissions can be quantified and how large its proportion of overall emissions. This isn’t as simplistic as it sounds. It’s a logical assumption that the more difficult a source of emissions is to quantify, and the less obvious it is as a source, the less responsible I am for it.
OK, so in my personal inventory, I’m going to include emissions from personal vehicular transportation and the electricity and heat I purchase and use. On a theoretical level, I think it’s valuable to consider emissions from transport of goods used and waste produced, more so for a business that is consuming many times what I do personally, but these emissions are also going to be relatively less and much more difficult to quantify. I’ll continue to eat local and organic whenever possible, but I’m not going to figure out how much emissions are saved by doing so.
For vehicular travel, quantifying is as simple as looking at receipts for gas purchases for a given length of time. I don’t have my receipts, but I drive two, sometimes three days a week and I estimate I fill my tank twice a month. Ol’ Cleo (that’s my ’97 VW Golf) has, I think, a 13 gallon tank. To be conservative, I’ll estimate I use 30 gallons of gasoline a month, and since I rarely have passengers, all of that is on me. I also estimate I travel by plane once per year, and it would be a simple matter to calculate an average distance per year traveled by plane. To be accurate, I would have to know the make, model, and efficiency of the planes on which I’d traveled, but it could be done.
Heat is more difficult, as my building uses central hot water heat, but a call to the super or management company could probably get me the volume of fuel used and the building’s occupancy, so it’s simple arithmetic to figure out my portion of emissions from heat. Electricity is easy, as I live alone and get a monthly statement that records kilowatt/hours (kWh) used.
OK, we know what we’re paying attention to and how we’re going to measure it. Now we need something to which we can compare, our base year. Some of this selection will depend on availability of data. Since I’ve move around a lot and don’t keep receipts and statements, if I was serious about this, I would probably have to collect data for a year and use that as my base year. Businesses would be better about hanging on to documents, and things have gotten easier with access to online statements and such.
Now we have our data, but it’s not in units that are usable for calculating emissions. I know how much gas I use, but I don’t know how many pounds of CO2 I produced. For that conversion, we use an emission factor and we end up with the following equation: activity data * emission factor = GHG emission. Emission factors are complicated beyond the scope of this little exercise, so I’m not going to go further with them. Suffice it to say they “are published by various entities such as local, state, or national government entities and intergovernmental organizations such as the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), and are frequently updated, so it is important to use the most up-to-date and relevant” (page 38). Armed with activity data and the appropriate emission factors, you can calculate your GHG emissions. Note: there are several calculation tools based on the power of the Excel spreadsheet, and in many cases, will be faster and more convenient to use, but their use should not be mindless. Also, looking at the equations themselves can be a powerful tool in altering behavior. We can directly control only one of those variables: activity data. We can travel fewer miles. We can indirectly control the emission factor by selecting a mode of transportation that has a smaller factor. Those are the only ways to reduce emissions.
The last step is the actual management of emissions, and we start with goal setting, and those goals will depend on the base year. Since I selected what I feel is an “average” year for myself, and since my intent is to decrease my emissions, my goal will be emissions less than my base year. How much less depends on several factors. For a business, it could be dictated by legislation, feasibility, or other reasons I can’t think of right now because I’m completely hopped up on caffeine and low blood sugar. For me personally, I would follow an experimental approach. Let’s say I arbitrarily select 10% reduction. I then find out a 10% reduction is feasible or not, and I can alter future goals to be more realistic. This approach is probably not realistic for a business.
Actual reductions on a personal level are the realm of Oprah and Real Simple magazine: install compact fluorescent lightbulbs, turn down the thermostat, take alternative transportation to work one day a week, etc. There are business analogs to these, and the guide does a good job of covering them. Often this is where we hear talk of “low-hanging fruit.” Reduce emissions through the easiest paths possible to start.
For a business, the final step will likely be reporting all of the above, especially if its goals were set because of regulatory legislation, but also because stakeholders should be interested in efforts like this. My reporting consists of making my friends feel bad by broadcasting at the slightest provocation that I ride my bike to work. I’m a hit at parties.
Sunday, February 28, 2010
Codes, Standards, and Frameworks
Synopsis: A compilation of codes, standards, and frameworks directly and indirectly related to sustainable business practices including:
Global Compact
UN Human Rights Norms for Business
OECD Guidelines for Multinational Enterprises
GRI Sustainability Reporting Guidelines
AA1000 Assurance Standard
SA8000
IS014001
Dow Jones Sustainability Indexes
Sarbanes-Oxley Act
Reflction: Like my post on Environmental Management Systems, this isn’t really a document for the layperson, and since I cleverly avoided both scathing criticism and deep reflection of that document by escaping into a daydream (albeit a daydream that stayed on point), and since I’m assuming that post used up my Get Out of Jail Free card re: posts lacking deep criticism or reflection, this post will be both harshly critical and deeply reflective. As such, it’s going to be boring.
OK then, for those stalwart readers sticking around, this is how it’s gonna go down. My first plan was to go through the list of codes, standards, and frameworks in the order in which they appear in the synopsis. For each, I would highlight issues and questions I found most important. After finishing the document, I’ve come up with a different plan. Each of these standards, codes, and/or frameworks is a tool, and as with any tool, there is an appropriate one for the job at hand. Without knowing the job at hand, it’s impossible to say which tool is the right one. As I read, I could envision application of some and not of others. Part of this is that this resource doesn’t contain details on the highlighted documents e.g. for ISO14001, it doesn’t explain how a business would create and implement an EMS in compliance with ISO14001, but explains why the ISO14001 was created, how it is operationalized, examples of who is in compliance, etc. Another reason is that many of these affect behavior and policy at a level I don’t understand, like legal requirements.
So, what am I taking from this resource? There were several things that stood out to me, including the Dow Jones Sustainable Indexes (DJSI). What I like about the DJSI is that it is a stepping stone from Big Business-as-usual to sustainable business practices. The fact is, if sustainable business practices or businesses using sustainable practices cannot be proven profitable to stakeholders, we’re sunk. As the resource states, the DJSI is an attempt at “mainstreaming sustainability concepts into investor decision making.”
The ISO14001 was interesting if for no other reason that it has been widely adopted and is well-recognized. Even I had heard of it before this resource (although it turns out I knew little about it). Like it or not, that kind of recognition makes it a powerful tool for marketing to the masses. If your company is ISO14001 certified and you don’t make that a selling point for your products or services, you’re doing yourself a disservice. For that matter, compliance with and/or membership to any of these should be viewed as a marketable business trait.
I see the GRI Guidelines as a powerful tool for businesses, especially in light of the global economy. Accountability, reporting, and transparency are all important parts of the movement toward sustainable business, and having a set of standards recognized worldwide makes direct comparisons that much easier.
Conclusion: This document will best be used as a starting point, since as I mentioned earlier, the actual content of these documents isn’t discussed in detail. In that respect, it will be useful. As my brother, who is an engineer once said, education isn’t so much about knowing stuff, as it is knowing where to look stuff up. I see myself working with other staff members of an organization to determine which of these guidelines we’re already following, which fit with our current mission, and which are particularly pertinent in whatever field we find ourselves. Once we’ve figured that out, we can go to those documents to work out the details.
Global Compact
UN Human Rights Norms for Business
OECD Guidelines for Multinational Enterprises
GRI Sustainability Reporting Guidelines
AA1000 Assurance Standard
SA8000
IS014001
Dow Jones Sustainability Indexes
Sarbanes-Oxley Act
Reflction: Like my post on Environmental Management Systems, this isn’t really a document for the layperson, and since I cleverly avoided both scathing criticism and deep reflection of that document by escaping into a daydream (albeit a daydream that stayed on point), and since I’m assuming that post used up my Get Out of Jail Free card re: posts lacking deep criticism or reflection, this post will be both harshly critical and deeply reflective. As such, it’s going to be boring.
OK then, for those stalwart readers sticking around, this is how it’s gonna go down. My first plan was to go through the list of codes, standards, and frameworks in the order in which they appear in the synopsis. For each, I would highlight issues and questions I found most important. After finishing the document, I’ve come up with a different plan. Each of these standards, codes, and/or frameworks is a tool, and as with any tool, there is an appropriate one for the job at hand. Without knowing the job at hand, it’s impossible to say which tool is the right one. As I read, I could envision application of some and not of others. Part of this is that this resource doesn’t contain details on the highlighted documents e.g. for ISO14001, it doesn’t explain how a business would create and implement an EMS in compliance with ISO14001, but explains why the ISO14001 was created, how it is operationalized, examples of who is in compliance, etc. Another reason is that many of these affect behavior and policy at a level I don’t understand, like legal requirements.
So, what am I taking from this resource? There were several things that stood out to me, including the Dow Jones Sustainable Indexes (DJSI). What I like about the DJSI is that it is a stepping stone from Big Business-as-usual to sustainable business practices. The fact is, if sustainable business practices or businesses using sustainable practices cannot be proven profitable to stakeholders, we’re sunk. As the resource states, the DJSI is an attempt at “mainstreaming sustainability concepts into investor decision making.”
The ISO14001 was interesting if for no other reason that it has been widely adopted and is well-recognized. Even I had heard of it before this resource (although it turns out I knew little about it). Like it or not, that kind of recognition makes it a powerful tool for marketing to the masses. If your company is ISO14001 certified and you don’t make that a selling point for your products or services, you’re doing yourself a disservice. For that matter, compliance with and/or membership to any of these should be viewed as a marketable business trait.
I see the GRI Guidelines as a powerful tool for businesses, especially in light of the global economy. Accountability, reporting, and transparency are all important parts of the movement toward sustainable business, and having a set of standards recognized worldwide makes direct comparisons that much easier.
Conclusion: This document will best be used as a starting point, since as I mentioned earlier, the actual content of these documents isn’t discussed in detail. In that respect, it will be useful. As my brother, who is an engineer once said, education isn’t so much about knowing stuff, as it is knowing where to look stuff up. I see myself working with other staff members of an organization to determine which of these guidelines we’re already following, which fit with our current mission, and which are particularly pertinent in whatever field we find ourselves. Once we’ve figured that out, we can go to those documents to work out the details.